


The Bullet in the Barrel

by trash4ficsaboutlurv



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Hispanic Maria Hill, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:17:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5873710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash4ficsaboutlurv/pseuds/trash4ficsaboutlurv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is being a little too reckless for Sam's peace of mind, the public is becoming wary of the Avengers' power, and Sam's pining is making him miserable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: There is a protest in this chapter (as mentioned in the summary) where Zemo uses white nationalist rhetoric and characters engage with the police.

The Bullet in the Barrel

 

“Steve, you almost died,” Sam says, trying and failing to avoid sounding pissed.

Steve shrugs and flashes a wry smile. “Guess I’m lucky.”

Sam makes a noise of disbelief.

And anger. There’s more than a little anger in that noise. “Steve,” he begins, but he can’t get further than that, than Steve’s name like a curse. His hands are actually shaking. He could chalk it all up to adrenaline, but he’d be lying to save face. He’s been lying to save face a lot since joining up with Steve, but that’s an entirely different set up of problems. Right now, he’d settle for Steve confronting his mortality for a second and avoiding _completely_ unnecessary risks. If anyone had pulled stunts like Steve did today when Sam was in the army, they would’ve been discharged before they could say “But, sir—.” And okay, Steve can take an unbelievable amount of punishment and get back up, but at the end of the day, he can die from a bullet to the head same as Sam.

Sam busies his hands adjusting the straps of his wings while he takes a couple deep, steadying breaths. He doesn’t want to yell at Steve. _Yelling isn’t_ _communicating_. That’s probably cross-stitched and framed in some marriage counselor’s office somewhere. Sam is well aware that he only wants to shout so much because he cares.

His mom had yelled a lot when he and his siblings were growing up, getting into hijinks. She’d say, “Baby, you know I only fuss because I love you and I don’t want your fool self in jail or dead.”  That was always where she went with it: “in jail or dead.” Now that he’s a hero and regularly appears in the newsreel with Steve—sorry, _Captain America—_ she yells, “Don’t let that white boy get you into something you can’t handle! I know you’re grown, but I don’t want you to end up brainwashed, mind-controlled, abducted, or dead.”

And Lord knows, Sam has been in this position before. Riley was a throw-himself-off-the-tall-thing-first, ask-for-air-support-second kind of a guy, too. And look where it got him.

Sam sighs. “Steve, relying on luck isn’t the best idea. You know, in the long run.” He cracks his knuckles and avoids Steve’s gaze as he says, “I didn’t sign up for a stress-induced heart attack from all your dumb gambles.”

Sam glances up in time to see the brush of annoyance on Steve’s face: the clenched jaw and hard eyes. “Is this really the time for an intervention?” he asks. They’re standing in what used to be a Starbucks, but could now serve as the set in an apocalypse movie. The acrid stench of gunpowder and burning rubber fills Sam’s nostrils and every couple minutes a piece of the wall or ceiling gives way.

Sam shakes his head. “Let’s meet up with Nat. My comms are out. Yours?”

Steve kicks his shield up from the ground and clamps it to his wrist. “Yeah. Is it just me or is Tony’s tech getting shittier?” He smiles at Sam like an apology.

Sam shakes his head again. “Last I saw her, she was on Main Street. I’ll do a flyover. It’ll be faster.” He doesn’t wait for Steve’s response. He jogs out to the busted up sidewalk, takes a few steps and launches into the sky.

The wind pulls at him, forcing him to focus on staying vertical, so there isn’t as much brain-space to worry about Steve. He doesn’t _want_ to worry about Steve. Steve’s a grown-ass man who survived plenty of shit before he met Sam. And Sam has other concerns. Fury’s been tapping him for more and more peacekeeping things with the Black Lives Matter protests—he’s even done some press, although he’s been pretty adamant that he doesn’t want to be the face of it and that the grassroots leaders are way more qualified than he is to talk about what’s going on in their particular communities. Along with that, one of his vets at the V.A. volunteered herself for suicide watch, another has been thinking about getting off his meds and Sam doesn’t think he’s ready, _and_ Sam needs to get up to New York to have Tony look at his wings. Sam has slimmed down a bit since taking up hero work and sometimes the calibration feels just a bit off when he’s trying to adjust in the air. It only takes one bad angle to turn into a smear on the ground, so he’s been an idiot putting the trip off as long as he has. With all that, Sam doesn’t need to worry about Steve maybe putting himself in danger more than he should.

He’s talked to Rhodey about it. Hadn’t meant to mention it, but somehow they’d ended up trading shots and war stories and suddenly Sam was saying, “I thought I did my time, you know? Worrying about some asshole who thinks he’s invincible. Riley sure as fuck wasn’t. And I’m scared shitless what it’s going to take before Steve realizes he isn’t.”

Rhodey had grabbed his shoulder, swaying a little. “Did you know someone did a study that showed that white men engage in more reckless behavior than any other group? Something to do with privilege and entitlement or something. Ask me about it when I’m sober.”

Sam laughed. “Thanks, Rhodey, but I don’t think this is a ‘white guy idiot’ thing. I think this is a Steve-idiot-thing.”

Rhodey nodded. “Could be. Not to show you up, but I’ve been worrying my ass off about Tony for twenty years. I don’t know what’s worse…” He paused to take a sip of his whiskey sour. “A know-it-all who’s smart enough to kill himself or a super soldier who’s brave enough to do it.”

Sam stared at the scarred up bar, traced a groove with his fingernail. “You say smart and brave; I say arrogant and selfish.”

“Yeah,” Rhodey said, looking serious for a moment before holding up his glass. “But I’m a glass-half-full sort of guy.” He shrugged. “You have to be in our line of work. You let the demons ride you, you’ll fall.”

“What are your demons?” Sam asked, falling into therapist mode without even thinking about it.

Rhodey laughed. “Oh no, we came out to get drunk. ‘Sharing time’ is over until you’ve had at least three pickle backs. Barkeep!!!” He motioned for the bartender and he and Sam proceeded to consume enough alcohol between them to put down a baby elephant. And sharing time didn’t came up again, although Sam is pretty sure if he called Rhodey right now, Rhodey would come and they could talk and Rhodey would make him laugh and put everything into perspective, so Sam could at least talk to Steve without half-wanting to cry. But Rhodey has his own shit. Everybody has their own shit. Sam’s sister, who would love to get into the middle of things and give Sam her wisdom, just had a baby and every time Sam has her on the phone, it sounds like someone is being sawed in half in the background. And his brother Gideon is terrible with advice. The one time Sam mentioned how much stress Steve has brought into his life, Gideon said, “But he’s Captain America!” Like that solved everything.

Sam pushes higher into the sky, then turns toward the center of the city where they left Nat. She was supposed to be escorting the senators away from the firefight and circling back after she put them in the bunker. Fury had probably given her some espionage thing though. Steve hates not having the whole picture with everybody’s orders, but Sam trusts that Fury knows what he was doing. Sam isn’t naïve and is more than willing to question authority, but Fury’s one of the good guys; Sam’s sure. He guesses it’s for the best Steve is so wary; it creates balance. As Sam whips downtown, he imagines going to Fury with his problem. Fury’d probably scowl and say that as long as Steve gets the job done, he doesn’t really care how he does it. Fury is incredibly result-centric like that. Probably why he’s running S.H.I.E.L.D. (or whatever they’re calling it now that they threw old S.H.I.E.L.D. into the Potomac and onto the internet.)

Sam swoops down low once he gets close to the bunker and there’s Nat, sitting on the hood of a Hummer talking with Senator Wesley. The senator, a mid-fifties woman in a powder-blue suit streaked with soot and debris, is waving her hands in the air as she speaks. She looks pissed.

Sam lands and strolls over. “Nat,” he says. “Senator Wesley.”

“Sam,” Natasha says. “I was chatting with Anna. Must have lost track of the time.”

Sam nods. Chatting means interrogating. “Steve and I cleaned up,” he says.

“And how much is _that_ gonna cost us,” Senator Wesley demands, jabbing a finger into Sam’s chest.

Sam’s used to this by now, the less-than-grateful citizens. “Tony—I mean, Iron Man is sending a crew as we speak,” he says. “Won’t cost you a thing.”

This does little to mollify the senator. Sam exchanges a look with Nat and she wiggles her eyebrows. “Meet back at base?” he asks.

“Your base or the director’s?”

“Mine,” Sam says. There’s no way he wants to give Fury a summary right now. He wants a shower, some orange juice, and a nap. He might even call Rhodey anyway. Go get drunk together. Steve can’t get drunk, so he probably won’t want to tag along. Going out might get in the way of his lonely, brooding time anyway.

 _Fine,_ Sam thinks to himself, he’s not being entirely fair. Finding Bucky had taken a backseat to a host of problems in the last couple months and Steve is understandably upset with their priorities. If Riley were out there—no, it wouldn’t be like this. Because Riley would bring his ass home. Because Riley—no, nope, not gonna do this. This is the bigger problem with the already-huge problem with Steve. Steve makes Sam worry, which reminds Sam about Riley, which reminds Sam about how they’re not looking for Bucky, which reminds Sam that he’s not looking for Riley because he knows exactly where Riley is and it’s just one big circle of fuckery. And it feels like if he could just get Steve to stop with the “lone ranger” bullshit, all the other stuff would settle down in Sam’s head and he can go back to normal. Granted, normal isn’t angst-free—no one goes through the shit show Sam went through unscathed, but he can go back to carrying all his angst in a little man purse instead of a two-ton roller backpack with shitty wheels.

He takes to the air again, this time looking for Steve. He finds him about a block away from the devastated Starbucks. “Need a lift?” he asks. He’s going for light and breezy, _me?-I’m-fine_ vibes, but he manages to sound pretty hostile for a guy offering to carry another guy home in his arms.

Steve looks up at him. He’s pulled off his mask and his regulation-length hair is as messy as regulation-length hair can get. He’s got some dirt on his cheek, but looks relatively unscathed. You’d never know Sam had had to dive across a room to pull him to the ground when one of the baddies pulled a gun on him and Steve just stared down the barrel. That had happened less than half an hour ago and Sam is still pissed, but trying not to show it. Trying to swallow those feelings, convince himself out of those feelings, do away with them all together. Because if he starts telling Steve how much it hurts when Steve pulls this kind of shit, there’s no way he won’t also spill his guts about how he’s fallen so hard for Steve, it feels like a gaping hole in his chest sometimes.

“I can walk,” Steve says.

“Yeah, I know. The thing is, you don’t have to.”

Steve looks down, laughs humorlessly.

“What?”

“It’s nothing,” Steve says. “Just, that’s what Bucky said one time. Exactly that. ‘Thing is, you don’t have to.’”

Sam lands, puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Bet you didn’t listen to him either.”

They walk home even though they’re both tired and bruised and Sam’s house is slightly beyond the city limits. They don’t talk much. Sam explains that Nat is exchanging pleasantries with Senator Wesley and he calls dibs on the upstairs bathroom, which has a tub and Sam really thinks he needs a date with a bath and some Epsom salt. Maybe it’s the after-fight high that gives him the bravery to say, “Maybe we can talk after we’re both washed and rested?”

Steve’s face goes hard and stubborn for a second, then annoyed, then defeated. That’s not all that encouraging, but he does nod. “Okay,” he says, like he’s agreeing to murder his firstborn.

Sam tries to lighten the mood with, “I actually do think Tony’s giving us his prototype tech; keeping the good stuff for him and Rhodey,” but Steve’s smile is distracted and he’s probably erecting defenses against whatever Sam wants to talk about later.

When they get home, Sam runs himself a bath, puts on an R&B playlist from Spotify, and sinks into the water. He’s planning to rehearse what he wants to say to Steve, how he’s going to say it in a way that gets through to him without making Sam too vulnerable. But the water is hot and his back and abs are sore from flying around and being thrown around, and it’s much easier just to sink into the water on the wings of Frank Ocean’s “Novacane.”

Nat knocking on the door wakes him up. “One sec,” he calls as he pulls the curtain around to block the view of him. “Come in,” he says. Through the shower curtain, he can see the shadow of Nat’s slight frame. “This has to be the first time you’ve ever knocked,” he jokes.

“Careful, Sam, you might housetrain me after all,” she says. Her lilting drawl invites you in, like you’re sharing a juicy secret together.

Sam smiles. “What’s up?” he asks.

“Steve’s at the dining room table like he’s got a guillotine hovering over his head. Thoughts?”

Sam splashes his face with water and starts to suds up a sponge. “I told him we need to talk.”

“Ah,” Nat says. “Words no one ever wants to hear.”

Sam soaps up his chest and shoulders. “Are you saying I shouldn’t?” He half-wants her to talk him out of it.

Nat’s quiet though. “Senator Wesley is trying to put together some legislation to circumscribe the Avengers. Fury wants me to put a stop to it.”

“Yeah?” Sam says. This isn’t exactly news to him. There’s definitely some anti-hero sentiment, especially here in Washington. He’s washing himself military quick now, so he can get out and see her face while they’re talking.

“Yeah. But since S.H.I.E.L.D turned out to be the bad guys, I’m not so sure we don’t need a little oversight.”

Sam pulls the plug and the water gurgles and groans as it swirls down the drain. “Congressional oversight isn’t necessarily going to forestall corruption,” he says, not really wanting to have this conversation.

Nat is quiet again.

“Can you hand me my towel?” he asks.

His towel appears at the edge of curtain.

“You should talk to Steve,” Nat says. “Get everything out in the open. Whatever ‘everything’ is.”

Sam steps out of the tub. Natasha’s wearing one of his t-shirts and a pair of his socks pulled up to her mid-calves. Her hair is in a wet, tangled bun. If someone had told Sam last year he would have Black Widow in his house in his clothes when he stepped out of the shower, the assumed context would have been vastly different from their reality. Nat has quite easily slipped into his life, like the enigmatic, Russian sister he never had. “How long was I up here?” he asks, turning off the music on his phone.

Nat shrugs. “I’ve been here about half an hour, so longer than that.”

“Are you hungry? We could order food.”

“You’re stalling.”

“Yeah, but you _could_ be hungry. It’s been a busy day.”

Nat reaches up and pats his cheek, which is as close to affection as she’s ever shown him. “I have to video chat Fury. Maybe after. I could go for Thai.”

Sam nods, waits for Natasha to leave before patting himself dry. He takes his time shaving and then stands in front of the mirror for a while trying to psyche himself up. He slips into a pair of sweats and a t-shirt.

Steve is sitting at the dining table, his fingers interlocked under his chin. His eyes are closed and a wrinkle puckers the skin between his brows. He opens his eyes when Sam comes in. “Nat thought you drowned,” he says.

Sam goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a new bottle of OJ. He holds it out to Steve, who declines. Sam forgoes the glass and drinks straight from the bottle. “Slow jams and hot water. Sends me to sleep every time.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” Steve says.

Sam smiles. They could do this instead. Be flirty and eat Thai food and ignore the not-fun stuff. People do that. “Nat wants Thai,” he says, coming to sit in front of Steve. Steve has a bruise on his jaw. It’ll fade in the next couple hours, but Sam catalogues it with all the other hits Steve has taken. He wants to touch it, kiss it better. He clears his throat and Steve shifts in his chair like he’s bracing himself.

“Steve,” he says, looking anywhere but at Steve. He picks at the label on the juice bottle, starts a little pile of confetti on the table. “You’re being reckless and it’s concerning me. And I’m not bringing this up because it’s fun. I’m bringing it up because I have to. Believe it or not, I actually don’t like it when you’re pissed at me.”

“I’ve never been mad at you,” Steve interrupts.

“Fine,” Sam says, still staring at the OJ label shreds. “Annoyed. Frustrated. Whatever word you want to use.”

“Sam,” Steve says, “I’ve never been _any_ of those things with you.”

“Right,” Sam snorts.

“I’ve been pissed and frustrated, yeah, but at the shitty situations we keep ending up in. At myself. I see what I’m doing to you.”

Sam looks up, his gut icy with apprehension. It’s turning into _that_ talk, the gentle _no thank you_ talk that’s going to work like a grenade in Sam’s chest. “You do?” he says, mouth dry.

“I’d have to be blind, Sam. I keep asking you to risk your life with me to go after my friend who tried to kill you, who’s killed dozens of people and might still be brainwashed to kill me and anyone who tries to get in the way. I should stop asking you to help me. You’re so…good. You don’t deserve to be in this shit, but I’m too selfish to do it alone. I mean, what kind of shitty person—”

“Steve,” Sam interrupts. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Steve looks like a man at confessional. “I’ve been terrible,” he says. “Since I came off the ice. Since I found out Bucky’s alive. I’ve been a fucking nightmare of a person. You’re so blinded by the Captain America shit, you don’t see that I haven’t done a single thing to deserve you as a—”

“You took down S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“They were trying to kill me.”

“You’re looking for Bucky.”

“And failing.”

“Steve!” Sam said. “Give yourself a fucking break. There’s plenty of shit to lay at your doorstep, but all this crap isn’t it. You’ve _more_ than earned my respect. And you can’t beat yourself up because you haven’t found a super spy/assassin who doesn’t want to be found.”

“There are other people looking for him, Sam. The people who brainwashed him and the people who want to kill him for the shit he did while he was brainwashed. And then there’s us. You and me.”

“I know. Okay? But Bucky can take care of himself. And we’re going to find him. If you can keep yourself alive, we’re going to find him.”

“How do you know that?” Steve asks and there’s so much yearning in his eyes, in his tone, for certainty, for promises. He wants Sam to have a Magic 8 ball that really knows that this story has a happy ending. And there isn’t such a thing and if there is—because, hell, there are gods and witches and super soldiers, so maybe there is—it sure as hell isn’t with Sam. And he knows that. And Steve knows that. And they’re both resenting the hell out of each other because there’s not a damn thing they can do. Sam can’t comfort Steve with anything but stupid optimism and Steve can’t help demanding to be comforted. Sam’s starting to see why Steve needs to punch punching bags across the gym. _He_ wants to punch something.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know that, Steve. I’m sorry I can’t offer you more. If I could find Bucky or look into the future and tell you it was all going to end okay, I would. But I don’t know.”

Steve’s looking more defeated than ever, but Sam hasn’t been derailed from his reason for having this conversation. “How do _you_ know you’re not going to get blown up the next time you go into a wired building to be a goddamn hero? How do you know that you’ll survive hurling yourself out of a helicopter? How do you know I’ll save you, that I’ll be _able_ to save you?” It’s all very close to the surface and Sam has to close his eyes. His hands are shaking again. Shaking hard and he’s back in Afghanistan begging Riley to take this whole thing a little more seriously, to stop flashing that devil-may-care grin instead of paying attention as they go through their maneuver drills, to stop seeing how fast he can hurtle to the earth before pulling up and sailing back into the sky. He’s back watching a firestorm exploding all around them on what should have been a routine bag-and-grab and Riley’s whooping and yelling “Is that all you got?” as he swerves out of the way of bullets and missiles and then the RPG that shredded his left wing and he’s falling like a rock, screaming and Sam can’t catch him, Sam’s too far away, he knows that, but he tries anyway, but there’s too much firepower and his tears are blinding him and for some reason, he’s screaming at Riley: “Why do you always have to be such an asshole?” because that’s better than asking him why he’s dead.

And then Steve’s there, holding Sam’s shaking hands in his and Sam opens his eyes, concentrates on being in this moment. Steve has pulled a chair up right beside him and Sam wants to bury himself in Steve’s arms, to be assured by the sheer physical reality of Steve, but he doesn’t; he won’t.

“Hey, I’m here. We’re here,” Steve says. “We’re in your dining room, D.C. We’re fine.”

“We’re fine,” Sam says. “But you might not be. You’re always such a—such an asshole, Steve. You can’t survive everything.”

“Just about. That’s how they made me. And I know you’ll catch me because you always catch me.”

“Until I don’t,” Sam says darkly.

“You shouldn’t worry about me,” Steve says. “Dammit, Sam, I’m worried about _you_. I know it sounds like I’m underestimating you, but you’re breakable and if something happened to you—you’re—I—” Steve looks down. His eyelashes tremble.

“Asking me not to worry about you is like asking me not to breathe,” Sam says. “When you’re walking down the street, I’m going to worry about you. Crappy driver hops the curb. Crazed lunatic sniper shoots you from five hundred feet away. All of that could happen and you’re my friend, so I’m going to worry. But when you pull the shit you pulled today—Steve, he had a gun in your face. And last time, how long did you hold that grenade before you threw it back over the wall? Too damn long.”

“You sound like Bucky,” Steve says.

“Is that what you’re doing? Trying to be the same, little shit you were back then when Bucky had to cover your ass? Because—not to minimize your struggles—but back then, you were dealing with a couple bullies in an alley and a handful of Nazis. And I’m not Bucky. I apparently lack his patience or his stomach for watching you do stupid shit.”

Steve’s as meek as Sam has ever seen him. “I’m not being—I’m not doing it on purpose,” he says finally.

“Well, that makes me feel a little better,” Sam says.

“I just get in those moments and it’s like—I see the goal and I forget everything else.”

Sam pulls their hands apart and grabs Steve’s shoulders. “That is a terrible fucking strategy, Steve.”

Steve laughs, sheepish. “Yeah.”

“When Riley—when Riley died, they took me out of the field because, you know, that fucks with your head, losing your wingman, your partner. I mean, they didn’t know it, but losing the person I thought was the love of my life.” Sam has never said this out loud, had never got around to that necessary confession to Riley. He needs a second to find his composure, to push through to his point. Steve doesn’t say anything. “No one took you out of the field,” he continues. “You lost a lot, more than a person should have to lose. And you came off the ice and went back into the field like all this shit _didn’t_ happen to you. That’s about as reckless as staring down the bullet in the barrel.” He shakes his head. “And then there’s the question: what are your options? Do you say, ‘Nah, I’m not Captain America anymore’? Because I don’t think that’s in you. And you’re not going to stop, at least not until we find Bucky, but probably not after that. I don’t think there are many people in this world who need to be a hero like you do, Steve. And I don’t mean that as a bad thing, but it sure as hell isn’t doing you any favors. And it’s not doing _me_ any favors worrying about when your dumbass is finally going to find out what coming to the end of your luck looks like. And I know I’m laying some heavy shit on you right now, but I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this to you for months and it hasn’t been fun watching you do everything in your power to end up in the hospital again. You’re not going to find Bucky if you’re dead and you’re going to break my fucking heart if you die, too. So,” Sam exhales, incredibly self-conscious and embarrassed, but relieved that he’s said everything he needs to say. “That’s basically all I wanted to put out there, so…there.”

Steve is staring at his lap, has been staring at his lap during Sam’s whole speech. When he looks up at Sam, his expression is so fiercely determined, it sort of takes Sam’s breath away. “You’re right,” Steve says, which is way more than Sam had expected. “And I’m sorry.” He smiles and Sam forgives him in an instant. That’s the trouble. Sam will probably spend his whole life forgiving Steve when he smiles like that. “Like I said,” Steve continues. “Goal. Nothing else.”

Sam nods.

“I thought it made sense to fight because that’s the only thing that hasn’t changed. Because it’s easier to fight than to look around and see there aren’t any handholds anywhere.” Steve is quiet again, staring thoughtfully somewhere to the left of Sam. “I thought about how chasing Bucky might be hard for you because of Riley,” he says.

Sam shakes his head. “That’s not on you, man.”

“If you’re allowed to worry about my mental state, I’m allowed to worry about yours,” Steve says. “This whole time I thought you and Riley were me and Bucky, in _those_ roles. A neat, little tragic parallel.” He says this with that same sad smile he flashed earlier. “But I’ve been your Riley all over again, haven’t I?”

Sam nods, a lump in his throat. “You’re both blond and tall,” he jokes, his voice a little raspy. “He was taller than you though. Weighed more.” He knows this because he lifted Riley out of enemy territory, dragged his dead weight all the way back to camp.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again and Sam knows he’s not offering his condolences, or rather, not _just_ offering his condolences.

“He was reckless,” Sam says, “but that’s not why he died. He died just being unlucky. How fucked up is that? No one to blame so I blamed everyone.” He swallows. “And I know I volunteered to do it all again with you; I just didn’t realize I would literally be doing it all again with you.”

Steve takes Sam’s hands in his again. “Do you love me, Sam? Like you loved—” He stops short of saying Riley’s name, but the way he’s looking at him has Sam good and cornered.

He debates holding off on this particular confession. He’s not drunk or delirious or dying, but he might as well lay it all out there. He’s already so exposed, what can this one last admission do? He nods, looks at Steve when he says, “Yes. I love you.”

Steve’s whole face is transformed by his smile, like a lighthouse calling Sam to shore, and Sam’s breathless and excited and nervous and delighted to be the recipient, the sole witness of such a beatific expression.

“Sam,” Steve says. He says Sam’s name like a complete thought, like a sentence requiring not one iota more.

“So, Thai?” Natasha says, coming into the kitchen. She stops short of the threshold when Sam and Steve turn back to look at her, their hands still intertwined. She smirks. “So, you talked,” she says like this was the exact outcome she expected, which, honestly, Sam wouldn't put past her. She seems to know everything already; why wouldn't she know that Sam’s ridiculous pining for Steve was reciprocated?

Steve doesn't extricate his hands from Sam’s as he says, “Thai sounds good.”

“I want something with pineapple. Like a pineapple chutney. What even is chutney? Or something glazed with pineapple.” Nat goes to the little organizer on the side of Sam’s fridge where he keeps all the menus. She pulls out the Thai menu and drags her fingers down the list, mumbling quietly to herself. Sam and Steve watch her, avoid each other’s eyes like they’ll ruin something if they look at one another.

After Nat makes their order online, they all go into the living room to watch the evening news. As expected, their afternoon exploits are the headliner. They aren't particularly interested in the summary of events, but the opinions of the pundits. As the news goes, so goes the American public. Lately there has been more and more grumbling from pundits and politicians about the so-called unilateral decision-making of the Avengers. Tonight’s newscasters are generally pro-Captain America and Company, but they interview Senator Wesley and she makes some pretty cogent arguments against their intervention today.

“You can't please everyone,” Sam says before flipping to ESPN.

They're sitting on the sofa together, Nat in the middle with her feet buried under Sam’s thigh for warmth. Steve glances at Sam over Nat’s head. “This could get ugly,” he says.

Sam nods, doesn't bring up what Nat said in the bathroom and neither does Nat. He has a feeling that it will get plenty ugly soon enough and he's not ready to invite that into his house, not tonight at least.

Natasha mentions that there’s a marathon of House Hunters International on and they watch couples complain about small bathrooms and high rent in Europe while they eat their roasted duck with green curry and pineapples. It's hard for any of them to watch any TV that isn't incredibly episodic with their respective, saving-the-world schedules, so they mostly end up watching reality TV on HGTV or one of the cooking channels. Sam and Steve are obsessed with Chopped, even though Steve can barely warm up Pop Tarts without burning down the kitchen. Natasha prefers House Hunters and those extreme makeover shows, Sam thinks because she is still looking for home and identity. That's the therapist in him, though, which he tries to turn off around the Avengers, because if he has to deal with their myriad traumas, he’ll end up a burnt out husk and besides isn't Steve enough to deal with?

Nat goes to the laundry room and retrieves her jumpsuit from the dryer. She comes back in with Sam’s t-shirt over her jumpsuit. “Do you mind if I borrow?” She asks. “If I go out in just my uniform, I'll have to break a couple ribs.”

Sam frowns in confusion and Nat’ clarifies: “Guys hitting on me.”

“Ah,” Sam says, wanting to apologize for his whole gender. “I’ve got a snowsuit somewhere in there if you want.”

Nat smiles. “Nah, the burden of being a woman is one I’ve carried for a while without resorting to snow suits. Although,” she pauses, “would it be too much if I kept a few things at your house for the future?”

“No,” Sam says. “Of course not. You can put them in the guest bedroom.”

Nat smiles and there’s barely a trace of her usual sardonic distance. They’ve really come a long way, Sam thinks but won’t say. She’d probably retract like a turtle if he brought up her burgeoning trust in him and Steve.

Sam offers to fly her home, but Nat takes Steve’s motorcycle instead. “I'll gas her up,” she promises. “Bye, boys.”

And then they’re alone again, almost careful with each other as they clear the coffee table. Sam feels like he’s balancing something precious and fragile on his head. He and Steve make eye contact, then look away like school children. There’s something delicate here that neither wants to endanger by a wrong word or movement. Sam’s kitchen is small, though, and it’s impossible not to touch. When it happens—when Steve’s finger grazes Sam’s wrist—it’s like every cliché at once. Electric. But they’re still protecting the fragile thing. Sam hands Steve the forks as he washes them and Steve dries them and puts them in the drawer. Sam wipes down the counters, the handle of the refrigerator door, the inside of the sink. And then there are no more things to wash. The gentle hum of central AC is their soundtrack as they finally turn to face one another.

“Sam,” Steve says again and it’s another complete sentence, complete thought. He leans forward—carefully, they’re both so careful—and he lets Sam come at his own pace. Sam is still so fucking scared, but his hands aren’t shaking anymore and when he kisses Steve, it feels like the physical manifestation of “Oh thank God.” It’s such a chaste kiss. There’s still plenty of space between their bodies, but Steve’s hands are resting on Sam’s waist and Sam is cupping Steve’s forearms. It’s all so pure, like the first kiss at the beginning of time must have been. The hesitance, the innocence, the simple need to touch and be touched. When Sam pulls away to breathe, Steve follows him forward, pushes into him and Sam gasps into his mouth and his hands fall to Steve’s sides, not to push him away or pull him close, but to touch more of him, to revel in the reality of Steve being here with him right now. They’re not in danger and they’re not avoiding their traumas or arguing about what needs to come first in a world gone sideways. They’re kissing _finally finally finally._ And Sam really does have to breathe, but Steve apparently has the lungs of a whale because he’s still following Sam forward, sucking on his bottom lip, running his tongue over the tender fullness. And maybe Sam wants to kiss Steve more than he wants a hit of oxygen.

“We have to—I have to—” Sam doesn’t know what he’s saying. Steve is kissing his jaw now, and then the shell of his ear and it’s making Sam’s breaths a little ragged. He clenches the fabric of Steve’s t-shirt. And then Steve bites his earlobe and Sam’s hips cant forward and he’s outright panting. Steve waits a second—Sam can feel his smile against his skin—before he rakes his teeth across Sam’s earlobe again.

“Steve,” Sam breathes.

“Do you want me to stop?” Steve asks.

“Yes—no—hold on.”

Steve steps back and Sam tries to gather his thoughts, which have scattered like dandelion seeds in the gusts of a hurricane. He smiles at Steve, who’s looking anxious. “Nat really undersold you, man.”

Steve laughs. “I told her ambush kisses aren’t exactly a fair testing ground.”

Sam touches his lips as though they should feel different now that they’ve kissed Steve’s lips. “Maybe I’ve got low standards.”

Steve shrugs, grinning, and Sam studies him. He seems different, different than he was this morning or on their walk home. Looser. A little less under siege. Sam can’t help but return the smile; he probably looks a little love drunk himself.

Everything seems possible right now. Bucky will walk in the door. The Senate will stop clamoring for their heads. Peace will cover the earth. It’s silly to feel this way, stupid and indulgent, but Sam couldn’t turn off this hopeful joy even if he wanted to.

And now that they’ve kissed, gotten it out of their system, so to speak, Sam and Steve are back to their usual selves when they return to the living room, not so careful. Do they sit closer than usual? Are they quieter as they watch two episodes of Cupcake Wars? Sam can barely keep his attention on the television. He feels too light, like he’ll float into the sky if he doesn’t concentrate on staying on the ground.

They normally go to bed after the news. They’re old souls together. They watch the 9 o’clock news, which is just a list of petty crimes and odd local stories that Sam only half hears and then Steve turns off the TV and Sam goes to lock the doors. Steve waits for him at the foot of the stairs like he always does.  They’re shy again, because they’re wondering what’s going to happen at the top of the stairs. Their rooms are at opposite ends of the hallway. Sam goes first, nervous anticipation mounting with every step. Anticipation he wants to temper with realism. Declarations of love only end in happily-ever-after in the movies, because they fade to black before the real stuff happens. Maybe they’ll get to the top of the stairs and realize it’s stupid to risk their partnership for what could be mere infatuation ( _It doesn’t feel like infatuation!_ Sam’s brain insists.) Maybe they’ll get to the top of the stairs and Steve will remember Bucky needs him too much for relationships. Sam takes the stairs slowly, wanting to prolong the moment before everything swirls into realness and there isn’t anticipation, only consequences.

But he has to reach the top at some point. And now he’s on the landing and he turns to Steve, whose smile is as warm as summer bonfires.  

“On your left,” Steve says.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says. He bumps Steve’s shoulder with his fist and just that small touch is like an invitation for more and Steve is kissing him again, has literally walked him into the wall. Sam isn’t a small guy, has tended to be about the height and strength of all his boyfriends and bigger than all his girlfriends except Sarina who is a professional basketball player. No one has ever been able to walk him backwards while kissing him so thoroughly, like he’s the last meal they’ll ever have so they’ve got to savor every bit of it. Steve is uncannily good at finding all the spots that turn Sam’s knees soft and Sam wants to reciprocate, but he’s so overwhelmed. His hands are moving in restless patterns on Steve’s back and then through his hair, which is softer than Sam’s paltry imagination could do credit. Steve lets his head fall into the cradle of Sam’s fingers and sighs and Sam takes the opportunity to kiss the column of Steve’s throat, sucking at his skin and feeling the vibrations of inarticulate, half-started words. And now Steve has changed direction, is pulling Sam toward him and they’re going toward Steve’s bedroom.

They’re barely past the door before Steve pulls his shirt over his head and Sam follows suit, because okay, yeah and then they’re kissing again. Sam doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of kissing Steve and now they’re skin to skin and the electricity has jumped a few watts, is sparking, sparking, sparking.

“Wait,” Sam says.

“Too fast for you?” Steve teases, dropping a final kiss on Sam’s shoulder before pulling away.

“There’s nothing wrong with slow,” Sam says. “I’ll show you some time.”

“Promise?” Steve says. And then before Sam can answer one way or the other, Steve says, “Bed?” and it’s just authoritative enough to sound more like an order than a suggestion even with the question mark at the end.

Sam sits on the edge of Steve’s bed until Steve joins him and promptly hauls him over the mattress. Sam’s going to have to get used to this super soldier strength thing.

“Do you want the door or the wall?” Steve asks.

“Door,” Sam says, probably too used to sleeping alone to be good at sleeping next to the wall without easy access to an exit.

Steve scoots over and lies down, pulling Sam with him. His chest is warm against Sam’s back and his arm is comfortingly solid around Sam’s waist. Sam interlocks their fingers. Steve is the thing holding him down, keeping him from floating away. “This isn’t how I expected our little talk to go,” he says.

Steve laughs. “Me either. I thought you had finally wised up enough to get rid of me.”

“I’m an idiot with low standards,” Sam says. He kisses Steve’s fingers.

“And I’m a reckless asshole.”

“Just be a little _less_ reckless,” Sam says, reluctant to bring seriousness into this light moment but needing to have his point hit home.

Steve squeezes him. “I’ll be more careful,” he promises and Sam knows that they’re just words and the real test will be in the middle of action, but he’s comforted anyway, that maybe, just maybe, Steve will keep himself alive—for Bucky, for Sam, for himself. “I love you, too,” Steve says after a long silence during which Sam has all but dozed off in the heat of Steve’s arms. “I didn’t say earlier: I love you, too, Sam.”


	2. Teach Me to Go Slower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Steve can agree that living with the person you want to date requires some delicate maneuvering.  
> Plus, the Superhero Registration Act is becoming more and more likely and Sam sees a storm brewing.

Sam pulls a handful of white t-shirts out of the laundry hamper, still warm from the dryer, and lays them on the ironing board. He begins to roll the shirts military-style, making quick efficient work of tucking and pulling the little bundles tight. Steve appears at the laundry room door and leans on the threshold, his hands in his pockets.

"Tony just called," he says.

Sam grabs another fistful of laundry, this time socks. "Yeah? What'd he want?" He presses mute on his phone, silencing the dying strains of Tamia's "Stranger in my House."

Steve shifts his weight. "Wondering if I'm coming with you to New York this weekend. And I had to tell him I didn't know you were going. Which isn't a big deal because we're not, you know, officially a couple, but I think even roommates--"

"Steve, I'm going up for a couple hours so Tony can fix my wings. I'm going to be on the _train_ longer than I'm in New York." He grins. "Although in the interest of sharing with you—as a roommate--after I'm done with this, I'm gonna go to the gym to play basketball with some friends. And after that, I'm going to the bank. And then I'll probably come back here. Since you wanna know."

 "Ha ha ha," Steve says drily. He raps his knuckles on the door frame. "Well, have fun," he says.  "You and Tony. Maybe I'll call up Rhodey. Hang out with him."

Sam laughs. "Steve, I had no idea you were so petty."

"Wha—I'm just—I was just saying since you'll be gone, maybe I'll hang with Rhodey. I like Rhodey. He's a good guy, funny, kicks my ass at Call of Duty without being a dick about it."

Sam nods, doesn't even try to hide that he's still amused. Even when Steve's being petty as fuck, Sam feels a warm glow when he looks at him. It's been a week since the whole I-love-you thing and they've decided to take things slow. Honestly, nothing much has changed, except now Sam gets to kiss Steve and flirt with him no-holds barred. They both agree that living with the person you want to date has some gray areas they’ll have to figure out, but neither wants to figure it out just yet. They apparently tapped out their candor at the dining room table last week. And so they’ve kept things light and airy and unofficial.

Nat's the only one who knows about them and she's got far more important things to deal with, namely Senator Wesley who's been chomping at the bit all week. Her anti-Avenger sound bites have been on every news channel around the clock. A couple other opportunistic politicians have seen that the issue has traction and they're adding their voices to the noise. Sam still hasn't mentioned to Steve that Nat's having doubts about Fury's point-of-view, especially because Steve seems so agitated whenever the issue is brought up.

" _I've_ got no choice. _I_ can't be anonymous, but it's downright dangerous to ask every superhero to put their names down in some database. Superheroes have super enemies. And those guys aren't idiots." That's what Steve said a couple nights ago, too riled up to keep quiet about it, even though Sam has put a moratorium on S.H.I.E.L.D. and superhero talk after six.

Sam hates that he can see both sides of the issue, especially because he knows this is probably going to turn into a shit show pretty soon—definitely once Tony does the Today Show next week. The Superhero Registration Act (that's what they're calling it and Sam has to wonder who's doing PR on this because the optics of a 'registration act' are uncertain, at best)--the act is bound to come up and Tony's opinion has a lot of sway with a lot of people. And since Steve and Tony have yet to agree on literally anything in the history of their friendship, Sam's got a bad feeling about how it will all turn out. That's actually part of the reason he's going this weekend. Get his wings fixed, test Tony's temperature, start erecting ballast in the event this shit goes nuclear. Tony and Steve don't tend to disagree quietly. They had an argument once about Red Vines vs. Twizzlers that ended a birthday party—Sam's birthday party, actually.

"Rhodey's good people," Sam agrees. "And I kick his ass at Call of Duty all the time, so he has every reason to stay humble. But, for your information, he's going to be in Qatar until next Sunday, so..."

Steve crosses his arms and huffs. "No one tells me anything."

"Poor baby," Sam says. He continues folding his socks and t-shirts, can feel Steve watching him, gearing up to say something else.

"Maybe I can tag along to New York," he suggests. "We could make a weekend of it. Go to Brooklyn, see the Statue of Liberty...Harlem--"

"Harlem?" Sam says. That's where his family lives, which Steve knows.

"Central Park," Steve says, blushing.

Sam abandons his laundry to face Steve directly. "You, whitest-boy-who-ever-lived, want to go to Harlem. Any particular reason? Some old buddies live there?"

"The Brooklyn Bridge," Steve continues, determinedly ignoring Sam's wiggling eyebrows. "The Bronx Zoo." His face is cotton-candy pink and his ears are red.

Sam is quite enjoying Steve's embarrassment. "Yeah, but I want to hear more about Harlem. What’s in Harlem?"

Steve's face is radioactive as he mumbles, "Always such an asshole.”

Sam grins, unapologetic. This is so Steve. They haven’t even had sex and he wants to meet the parents. Of course, Sam and Steve’s first outing together as friends had been to take on a secret organization bent on world domination, so they’re not exactly into traditional chronologies. Maybe it would be more shocking if Steve suggested something small and normal for once instead of big and possibly life-threatening. Mama Wilson is very protective of Sam’s heart. She doesn’t _know_ that Sam’s misery over Riley’s death was more complicated than losing a best friend and wing man, but she has a pretty good idea. She’s a mama and good mamas can tell that sort of thing. And if Sam brings Steve to her doorstep, she’ll be able to read it on Sam’s face that something’s going on, even if Steve and Sam haven’t defined that something. And Steve is sooooo bad at lying, remarkably bad at lying; they won’t be able to hide it even if they want to. But Sam’s so happy, he doesn’t mind—not yet anyway. And so he asks Steve, “Do you wanna stay with Tony or stay in 'Harlem'?" He makes finger quotes around “Harlem” because he is an asshole. But only because Steve was an asshole first. "I have to warn you, 'Harlem' might insist we stay with 'Harlem' if we make our presence known to 'Harlem.'"

"Are we ready for that?" Steve asks, ignoring Sam’s teasing.

Sam studies Steve’s face before answering. A residual blush still stains the tops of his cheekbones, making his eyes look even bluer than usual. "You brought it up," he says. "I'm okay with slow."

"Yeah?"

Sam nods. Doesn't say, in fact, he prefers it, because that might be too emphatic and make Steve worry. More than he already does. Sam has self-diagnosed himself as an incessant worrier who pretends he's not worrying, but Steve is more of a wear-his-worry-on-his-shoulders kind of guy, right out there for anyone to see.

“We’d never hear the end of it from Tony if we didn’t stay at the Tower,” he says.

Steve nods. “Your ma won’t be mad?”

Sam shrugs. “She’ll be thrilled she has something else to fuss about. ‘You’re the Falcon, now you’re too good to come stay in the house of the woman that birthed and raised you, huh?’”

Steve laughs. “Yikes.”

“It’s fine. I’ll blame you and be off the hook.”

“I’d like to meet her,” Steve says. “She sounds formidable.”

Sam nods, thinking of his mama with all her strengths and vulnerabilities, how he loves her more than anything and how much he loves Steve. His heart starts to feel a little too full. “I’ll introduce you to her as that guy who keeps getting me almost killed. She’ll fuss for a bit, and then interrogate you about your diet and offer you cornbread while she fixes you too much food because you can never eat enough for my mama.”

“Sounds perfect,” Steve says and Sam can tell he means it.

That too-full feeling in his heart forces him to turn back to his laundry. He’s very glad his skin covers a blush better than Steve’s right about now. He matches his socks together and sets them carefully on the folded pile in the hamper. Steve hasn’t left yet, but when Sam glances up at him, he’s staring at his shoes. He’s worrying about something else—as usual. Sam is just about to turn his playlist back on when Steve blurts out:

“I still haven’t told Tony we’re looking for Bucky.”  He continues to stare at his shoes instead of looking at Sam.

“I figured as much,” Sam says after a couple seconds, keeping his tone neutral. Sometimes Steve can get skittish if Sam sounds like he’s going to try to convince Steve to do something he doesn’t want to do. Steve has been quite adamant about keeping the circle of people who know about his search small. Sam and Nat have pointed out that Tony’s resources could make a big difference, but Steve is stubborn. Or at least he has been up until now.

“Maybe we should. Tell him.”

Sam leans against the dryer and folds his arms. “Okay…” he says. “What’s changed your mind?”

Steve shrugs, widens his stance. “Those politicians are out for blood. They want to put us all under a microscope. That kind of scrutiny won’t be good for me or you, definitely not Tony. But it’s gonna be worse for Bucky, much worse.”

Sam weighs his next words on his tongue for a long time, long enough for Steve to stop staring at his shoes and look up at him. “If that’s the case, maybe we should let Bucky stay gone.”

“Sam—”

“Let’s say we find him, Steve. How are we going to keep him out of the spotlight? He’s off the radar right now. Maybe safer than he’d be with us.”

“Or maybe dead,” Steve says. He’s angry. Forget all he said last week about not ever being mad at Sam. He’s pissed. He’s clenching his jaw and glaring like he’s got laser beam powers and he wants to liquefy Sam.

And Sam gets it. He’s suggesting that Steve should abandon his best friend. Again. After the initial abandonment of leaving Bucky when he fell off the train. As if that were somehow Steve’s fault. Sam is telling Steve to leave Bucky all over again. Or at least, that’s what Steve’s hearing.

“We don’t stop looking for him,” Sam clarifies. He comes to stand in front of Steve, so Steve has to look at him. He clasps his shoulders. “We just stop trying to bring him in.”

“Bu—”

“We find him, we keep our distance, we make sure he’s safe. If he comes to us, that’s one thing. Hell, he probably knows exactly where we are right now. But if we drag him kicking and screaming into the light, we’re no better than all those politicians and we’re probably dragging him into, at best, a lot of congressional hearings and more likely, to a jail cell in some undisclosed hell in America’s armpit. You’ve heard Senator Wesley. She’s throwing around the word ‘accountability’ but what she means is ‘I’m scared’ and fear makes people do some fucked up shit.”

Steve’s scowling the whole way through Sam’s little speech, but exhales a resigned gust of breath through his nose when Sam’s finished. “I know you’re right,” he says.

“But you wish like hell you could tell me to fuck off, you’ll do what you want?”

Steve nods, brings his hands up to Sam’s hips. “Yeah,” he admits. He leans forward and presses his forehead to Sam’s shoulder.  “So that’s a no on telling Tony?”

“Let’s think about it,” Sam says before running his hands through Steve’s close-cropped hair.

Steve sighs. “I don’t have any new leads on Bucky yet. And my head’s not in it right now. I need some down time to _not_ think about it. If that’s not too terrible of me.”

“Self-care is very important,” Sam says, massaging Steve’s scalp and enjoying the way Steve nudges into his hand like a cat demanding more petting.

“You could ditch your basketball friends,” Steve says. “We could sit around the house and not think together.” He’s moved from leaning on Sam’s shoulder to kissing his neck and Sam is very susceptible to Steve’s wiles. Very.

“I can’t,” he says. “One of the players is a vet who didn’t want to come down to the VA. I wanna see if I can get him to let his walls down a little.”

“Can you have less noble excuses?” Steve asks, his tone as petulant as a kid.

“I’m a hero, baby,” Sam says in a self-deprecating tone. He grins as he disentangles himself from Steve, who is doing an excellent impression of an octopus the way he’s wrapped himself around Sam.

“We should go on a date,” Steve says and his face flushes coral pink all over again. “That’s what people do. Date.”

“Yeah?” Sam asks. “Who are these people? Nat? Fury? Clint?”

Steve makes a face. “You know what I mean.”

Sam smiles. “Yeah, I know. And we should. Go on a date. That feels normal.”

“Uh-oh, you were in this for normal?” Steve asks. He’s playing with the hem of Sam’s shirt as he speaks, the back of his fingers brushing against the sensitive skin above Sam’s waistband.

“Yeah,” Sam says, trying to sound wry and unaffected by Steve’s touch. “I thought about it for a while and figured a super soldier who’s woken up seventy years after his supposed death and is now on the hunt for his super spy friend, who also survived his apparent death seventy years ago, would lead to all sorts of normalcy.”

Steve tugs on Sam’s shirt until Sam has to take a couple steps forward and they’re in each other’s personal space. “I hate when you sum up my life like that.”

“Too accurate?” Sam asks.

“No,” Steve says, “it’s missing you.” He looks shy and embarrassed as he says it, which only makes it that much more charming.

“Fine,” Sam says, smiling like an idiot. “Super soldier searches for super spy with the help of terribly good-looking, regular human.”

“You are terribly good-looking,” Steve agrees. “Are you sure you don’t want to abandon your suffering vet friend to sit on the couch with me and not think together?”

Sam laughs. “How about this: I finish folding all of this and go play basketball, maybe get my guy to agree to come talk with me in my office. I skip the bank and come back here. You’ll buy our tickets for the weekend and text Tony that we’re coming. And you can plan our totally normal date.”

“Should we invite Nat?” Steve asks.

Sam frowns. “That would fly in the face of our one criterion of ‘normal’ but if you want…”

“I meant, to New York. Nat coming to New York with us. She’s looking stressed and Nat never looks stressed.”

Sam bites his lip. “This registration act is kinda hard to put to bed.”

“Yeah…” Steve’s starting to look agitated again.

“We’ll all go to New York and forget about it for a couple days,” Sam says. “You know how long it takes for a bill to go through Congress. It’s fine.” He kisses Steve gently, mostly to comfort him but also as a distraction from more talk of Nat and registration, but Steve responds eagerly—because big-damn-gesture Steve doesn’t really do pecks on the lips. He does searching, exploring, soul-simmering kisses, and Sam has to give as good as he gets, so what should have been a distraction kiss is ramping up into a teenage make-out.

Sam has thought about it a lot since their first kiss, trying to explain to himself what exactly Steve does to make Sam’s head cloudy and his dick hard in seconds flat. Kissing Steve is like taking a hit of morphine, but it’s also a bit like sticking a fork in a toaster. Dizzying, sparking desire.

Sam presses a hand to Steve’s hard chest, trying to put some distance between them because this sure as hell isn’t ‘going slow,’ but Steve covers Sam’s hand over his heart and deepens the kiss and Sam doesn’t actually want to stop. Steve grunts in surprise when Sam pushes him back into the wall, before laughing breathlessly as Sam drags his lips over the perfect hard line of his jaw. (The Righteous Jaw of Justice™). Steve is plucking at the buttons of Sam’s shirt and Sam should absolutely be shutting this down, but he’s reworking his schedule in his head and he doesn’t have to be at the basketball court for another half hour and it’s about a fifteen minute drive and--god, now Steve is running his hands up and down Sam’s chest—he can finish folding the laundry any time or better yet, he could just stuff everything in a drawer, unfolded. Army training be damned. Steve has shrugged out of his jacket and is pulling Sam’s shirt off his shoulders and Sam is worrying pink bruises all over Steve’s neck and collarbone. Steve turns them around, so Sam’s back is against the wall and he starts kissing down Sam’s chest and Sam makes a sound of protest that’s really just a groan and Steve says, “Let me—” but doesn’t finish the thought because he’s focused, unbuttoning and unzipping Sam’s jeans. And Sam’s sharp intake of breath is all he can manage before Steve is holding his cock in his hand and looking up at him, an expression of pure happiness on his face. And Sam is thinking, There’s time for this, oh my god Steve, but again all he manages is a grunting noise and Steve takes him in his mouth.

“This isn’t going slow,” he says breathlessly when he's maybe 12% less stunned that this is happening.

Steve kisses the head of his dick. “Maybe I’m not good at slow.” He follows this up with a torturously slow lick. “Maybe, you’ll have to teach me to go slower.” And another. And Sam is thinking ‘what an asshole’ and ‘oh my god, I’m not gonna last,’ and ‘god yes,’ but all he manages is some ragged, shaky breaths and then Steve isn’t going slow anymore, is going very fast and it’s very good and—and—and--

This zero-to-sixty pace has left Sam’s wits back at the start line and all he can do is submit to Steve’s mouth, to the way Steve follows every hitch of Sam’s breath, every roll of his hips, lingers just long enough to make Sam think he’s gonna come before moving on to lavish attention elsewhere. Sam knows he sounds like a fat guy running up a flight of stairs, but he’s so overwhelmed with sensation, so close to the edge, and he wants to tell Steve how good it feels, that he’s so good, but the words won’t come out and he’s pulling Steve’s hair, saying, “I’m—I’m,” and Steve stays with him and Sam curls forward, shuddering, shuddering, shuddering, and it’s an orgasm he feels in the soles of his feet and it’s taking a lot of concentration to stay upright.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “Fuck.”

“I don’t think there’s time,” Steve says, all innocence and Boy Scouts charm.

Sam is too dazed to string together even something as simple as “Shut up” or “Thanks.”

And now Steve stands in one fluid motion, pulling Sam’s jeans up at the same time. He kisses Sam softly. “We’ll go slower next time.”

“Right,” Sam says.

“Now, go do your hero work. I’ve gotta buy our train tickets.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just saw the new CA:CW trailer. (NOT ENOUGH SAM and TOO MUCH OF RHODEY HURT), but it inspired me to go a little further.


	3. Fighting's Different

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, Nat, and Steve go to New York Part 1

Riley had this thing: if someone did him a favor or cracked him up, he’d say, “Oh my god, marry me!” or sometimes “God damn! Marry me, you fucking idiot.” That last one was mostly reserved for Sam. Like the time, Riley lost his water ration in a firefight and he and Sam were pinned in a cave unable to return to camp until the shooting stopped. Sam offered Riley his own half-full pouch and Riley pulled him into a headlock and said, “I mean it, Sam, get the justice of the peace out here. We’re getting fucking married.”

He was over the top like that, the kind of guy you either really loved or _really, really_ hated. Plenty of people told Sam his partner was a moron or an asshole or a moronic asshole, but Sam thought the sun rose and set with Riley. After he died, Sam almost wished he’d hated him, had found his melodramatic flair and reckless abandon annoying. Maybe then it wouldn’t have hurt so bad, wouldn’t have eaten him up like an aggressive cancer.

But now that’s Sam mostly come to terms with Riley’s death, having loved him isn’t something he wants to give up. They had some good times together and sure, Sam loved Riley, but there was never really a moment where he felt pine-y and sad about it. He was too swept up in Riley’s larger-than-life personality, by turns charmed and terrified that Riley never took anything seriously. And then things got too serious.

Sam swallows and fidgets with his train ticket. Now isn’t the time to be thinking about Riley, not here on the train with Steve and Nat on their way to New York. He only thought of him just now because he overheard a snippet of the conversation behind him, this girl whispering furiously into her phone, “He asked her to marry him. I thought she was just a rebound!” Little things like that can remind Sam forcefully of Riley—at one point, would have sent him into a panic attack. Thinking about Riley used to _hurt._ But now he can turn to Steve and say, “Did I ever tell you how Riley was always proposing to anyone who did him the tiniest favor?”

Steve smiles, shakes his head. “Like, the waiter handing him a fork or…?”

Sam nods. “I’m pretty sure he proposed to the OB-GYN when she pulled him into the world. One time this huge homophobe in training camp offered to trade Riley’s milk for orange juice and Riley says, ‘I mean it, keep that up and we’re getting hitched,’ and the guy decked him.”

Steve winces sympathetically and Sam laughs, remembering. “Riley’s on the ground with a split lip and he says, ‘I was just trying to make an honest woman of you, Phil.’ Phil’s face was so red and this vein was popping in his forehead like an anime villain and he tried to leap over the table to finish Riley off, but his foot got caught and he fell down, knocked one of his own damn teeth out. He was a real piece of work.”

“Sounds like a dick,” Steve says.

Sam nods. “Yeah, but I think Riley knew what he was doing. Phil didn’t exactly give off ‘Coexist’ vibes. And Riley was a little shit.”

“I think I would have liked him,” Steve says.

Sam nods, feels suddenly possessive of Riley. “Is there a reason we decided to take the 5AM train?” he asks.

He taps his fingers on the train window, which is dewy with morning mist. The sun is just beginning to paint the twilight with tendrils of apricot and pink, and the moon is hovering on the edge of the horizon. Nat clearly isn’t a fan of the early hour, as she’s already curled up in a ball on the seat across the aisle, her train ticket perched on the arm rest for the ticket master to scan without waking her.

Steve shrugs. “The Amtrak takes us to Penn and it gets pretty touristy there, right? I wanted to avoid the crowds a little. Maybe see Times Square without…”

“The massive disorientation of being catapulted seventy years into the future fighting aliens?”

Sam turns away from the window to catch Steve’s wry smile. “Something like that,” he says.

Steve is wearing his civilian costume—baseball cap and glasses. His face is still pretty recognizable and when the ticket agent sees his name on the ticket, her eyes widen with surprise and Steve brings a finger to his lips to shush her. He has to sign a crumpled receipt before she’ll move along.

Sam smirks. “She didn’t care about me at all,” he says. “I’m hurt.”

Steve looks ready to put up some kind of protest, but Sam kisses his cheeks and says, “Kidding,” to forestall him. Sam doesn’t do the hero work for pretty blondes to notice him (well, okay, one pretty blond) and he’d be annoyed if he was pursued the way Steve is. After Sam helped knock down the hellicarriers, journalists had camped out in front of his condo and at his work for weeks. They still pop up if Sam gets pulled into something conspicuous, and it’s only made Sam despise paparazzi.

There’s only been one time when Sam felt good about being recognized: he was in Safeway buying groceries when a little girl in two giant Afro puffs crashed into his knees followed by her brother, who was only a few inches taller and maybe a year older. They looked up at him, the little boy apologizing, but the little girl smiled a gap-toothed grin and said, “You can fly like my daddy.”

“Your daddy?” Sam asked and she nodded.

“He died, but he used to fly in the desert before the bad guys got him. He got a Medal of Honor. That’s a big deal. He didn’t have wings though.”

Sam had crouched down to her level and said, “I bet he was a real hero.”

The little boy tugged on his sister’s overall strap, saying, “Come on, Izzie.”

“I wanna fly too,” Izzie whispered to Sam.

He smiled. “Well, to fly, you have to be big and strong, so you gotta eat your vegetables, even the ones you don’t like so much. And you have to be smart, so you have to do all your homework, especially math. Can you do that?”

She nodded. “Okay, Falcon.”

Sam hadn’t told anyone about that run-in. It’s too precious, somehow private. He hopes Izzie _does_ become a pilot someday, but not for the Air Force, not for any war. Who knows? Maybe by the time she’s old enough, humans will have figured out that bombs and guns don’t solve problems. That it kills wonderful people like Riley and Izzie’s dad, and the hundreds and thousands of people in the Middle East whose names and lives Sam will never know. It turns happy people into jumpy, scared shadows of themselves. Maybe the Avengers can make it so war is never presented as any kind of solution. What did Rhodey say? _I’m a glass-half-full sort of guy. You have to be in our line of work_.

Sam intertwines his fingers with Steve’s. It’s easier to be optimistic holding Steve’s hand than staring out at an indifferent, blushing sky. Sam smiles, feeling both melancholy and content. Steve squeezes his fingers and they watch the sun climb over the trees.

The trio arrive at Penn Station a quarter before eight and decide to walk the 12 blocks to Stark Tower. They’re going north first, so Steve can see Times Square before they cut back east. There are already people out, but nothing like the swarms that will appear in the next few hours. Steve has a list of things he wants to do while they’re in the city, and Sam has tried to schedule everything with an eye to avoiding the most torturous crowd conditions. He has also preemptively accepted Tony’s offer of a car service, because Steve would have declined and they would have spent most of their time on subways squashed between German tourists and break dancers with their boom boxes and elaborately dangerous routines. Sam might fight killer bots and terrorist organizations, but if he can avoid some of the day-to-day noise and inconvenience, he will. Even if it feels a bit hoity-toity to have a driver. He reminds himself that the driver has to make a living anyhow, so it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s a thin justification at best.

When they get to Times Square, Steve falls behind and stares up at all the flashing billboards in quiet wonder. Sam and Nat continue walking, giving Steve whatever privacy he needs to drink in his changed New York. It is undoubtedly a less seismic sight-seeing venture than the last few times he’s been in the city, between coming off the ice and fighting aliens. Nat and Sam are less impressed with the grimy splendor.

“Can you believe the wife?” Nat demands, referring to the House Hunter’s ep they watched together last night. “She kept saying ‘so we can entertain, so we can entertain.’ And I’m thinking, with a personality like that, how do you have any friends? Who’s gonna want to come over?”

Sam laughs. “I wanted to deck the husband. He was acting like it was the realtor’s fault that their budget was so tiny. Virginia real estate is a whole different ball game from Texas.”

Nat shakes her head. “I couldn’t be a realtor. I would turn back to murder.”

“You’ve dealt with way worse than some annoying home buyers.”

“Yeah, but I was usually allowed to punch them at some point.”

Sam concedes the point. He tries imagining Nat in a customer-oriented job and at first, he thinks she’ll be fine. She’s dealt with Tony and senators and all manner of trying personalities, but doing that day-in and day-out? Nah, Nat would probably lose her mind. For all her people skills, she’s not exactly people-oriented. Sam tries not to bring his therapist training into his friendships, but it’s honestly a psychological miracle Nat has let her walls down with him as much as she has. He’s grateful; she’s a good person to have in your corner and he would hate to be against her—in a trivial argument or a real honest-to-goodness fight. She’s a remarkable person and her skill set is astounding. Like how she has somehow conned Sam into giving her a piggy back ride the last few blocks, even though Steve is right here with his super strength and his attention refocused now that they’re past all the lights and drama of 42nd Street.

“I’m trying to help you bulk up,” Nat explains. “This is good exercise for you.”

“You hardly weigh anything at all, Nat.”

“Then stop complaining,” she says and Sam can hear the smirk in her tone.

Happy meets them in the lobby and he looks them over, pats Sam and Steve down, but nods to Nat with a pretty healthy dose of intimidation and respect in his eyes. Sam wants the story, but it’ll have to wait.

They get into the elevator and it’s not hard to tell that Steve and Nat are also girding their loins for Tony. Tony’s brand of self-deprecation and aggrandizement is still off-putting to Sam, but he can tell the guy’s got his heart in the right place and is most likely dealing with some demons of his own. Sam hasn’t had much one-on-one time with Tony, has mostly left Steve and Tony to bicker at Avengers get-togethers, because he’s no one’s baby-sitter and as much as he’s impressed by Tony and loves Steve, those two are aggravating as hell when they get into it. Luckily, Sam and Steve don’t plan to stay long. Drop off the wings for Tony to work on and then they’re off to the Natural History Museum and then further uptown to see Sam’s parents.

“Couldn’t get here any earlier?” Tony says by way of greeting. He’s only wearing pajama bottoms, eating granola from a tall canister. “Jarvis, could they have come any earlier?”

“Amtrak records show that Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and Natasha Romanoff took the earliest train, sir” Jarvis says.

Sam shrugs. “Don’t look at me. We left the ticket-buying to Steve.”

“Thought it had his stink on it,” Tony says before yawning. “I don’t work before breakfast, so you can set your wings anywhere. One of my guys will take it down to the lab.”

Sam sets his wing pack at the foot of the coat stand by the elevator. “Okay, thanks, I really—What the heck is happening?” A small drone has flitted over and is shining its light all over Sam, beeping quietly to itself.

“Getting your measurements. Height. Weight. All that.”

“You couldn’t ask first?” Nat says dryly.

“Not my style,” Tony quips.

Steve bats the drone away. “Where’s Pepper?” he asks.

“Out in Malibu. She’s overseeing reconstruction while I do a couple TV spots next week. Apparently I have to repair my image after creating a Death-Bot who unleashed apocalyptic hell on earth.” Tony smiles, but there’s sarcasm in his eyes.

Steve grimaces and Sam wants to grab his shoulder, tell him to resist any impulses toward moralizing and I-told-you-so’s. Even though Steve is often right, he can be a little too righteous about it and it’s not his most endearing quality. Sam resists the urge only because they’ve agreed that their unofficial whatever-this-is should stay between them until they figure it out, and Sam doesn’t think just-a-friend would reach out and touch another just-a-friend’s shoulder because he looks slightly annoyed. At any rate, Steve doesn’t say anything and Nat takes up the conversational slack.

“I was hoping I could get Pepper to join me and Maria today.”

“Agent Hill’s not in D.C.?” Tony asks.

“No, she’s been in Toronto this past week and I suggested she come through New York before going home.”

“What’s in Toronto?” Tony asks, then waves his hand. “Doesn’t matter. You guys gonna stick around or do you have tourist things to do?”

“Tourist things,” Sam says, fiddling with the handle of his suitcase.

“Figures,” Tony says, popping another granola cluster in his mouth. “We’ll do dinner then. Dinner? Jarvis, can you call someone to make dinner for four?”

“What cuisine would you prefer, sir?”

Tony raises his eyebrows at Sam, Steve, and Nat. “American?” he says. “Some good, old-fashioned, red-white-and-blue spangled American?”

Nat wrinkles her nose. “I’m not even sure what American cuisine is.”

“Burgers?” Sam suggests. “If you’re getting technical, soul food is probably the most American, since it was created here. Are we eating soul food?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “You guys don’t appreciate my wit. Get out of here. Leave your stuff. One of my guys will put it in your rooms. Dinner at seven and don’t be late.” He wags his finger in a pretty convincing imitation of a nagging parent.

“Thanks, Tony,” Sam says as he steps into the elevator.

The doors close and Steve says, “Should I have warned him not to create any more murder bots while we were gone?”

Sam and Nat raise their eyebrows in unison and Steve says, “I’m joking. Mostly.”

Back in the lobby, Happy points Steve and Sam to their black car. Nat declines to join them and when they leave, she’s on the phone with a worried expression on her face. So much for destressing in New York.

****

Sam and Steve wander through the Natural History Museum for about an hour. Sam’s childhood fascination with volcanoes is reignited as they watch a short cartoon showing the shifts of tectonic plates that create volcanoes and mountains. Steve takes a selfie with the dinosaur fossils and says, “Christmas present for Nat. I think I’ll get it on a shirt for her.”

There is a special exhibit on birds that costs extra, but Sam is willing to finance it. He and Steve are led into a small room with literally hundreds of different birds suspended at varying heights from the ceiling. Sam and Steve try on the headphones at each little station to hear the different cries and squawks of the birds and Sam swears it sounds like the birds are talking in honest-to-goodness human speech. At the back of the room are some life-sized models of prehistoric birds.

“What the hell is this?” Sam asks, approaching what can only be described as a nightmare with feathers.

Steve reads the plaque. “Titanis. Flightless. Carnivorous. Lived around 2 to 5 million years ago. 2.5 meters tall and 150 kilograms.”

Sam snorts. “In American units, this bird is too damn tall and weighs a fuck ton.”

“I think we could take him,” Steve jokes.

“Feeling confident, are we?” Sam says. “Maybe you’re ready to meet my mom then.”

Steve suddenly looks nervous and Sam pats his arm. “I was kidding about most of the stuff I said. She’s a sweet, old lady. Besides, you’re Captain America.”

“Yeah, and I’m trying to date her son.”

Sam grins. “We won’t tell her that just yet,” he says. “Just in case she hates you.”

“That’s not funny,” Steve says.

“Sure, it is,” Sam says, wrapping his arms around Steve’s waist. “You just think I’m too pretty to be funny. Admit it.”

Steve presses his forehead to Sam’s and says, “Shut up, please.”

Sam laughs. “Fine. Let’s go to Harlem.”

Back in the car, Steve jostles his leg so hard the car is rocking and Sam has to smack his knee a couple times to get him to notice. “I was just messing with you,” Sam assures him again. “She’s gonna like you and she’s not scary at all.”

“Too late, Sam.”

“You’ve thrown yourself off roofs, Steve. I’ve had to literally beg you _not_ to throw yourself off roofs. And my mom is scary?”

“Fighting’s different.”

Sam rolls his eyes. Steve—the poster child for suicidally reckless—is nervous. Will wonders never cease?

The driver lets them out 120th Street and Lenox Avenue and they walk the block and a half to his parents’ apartment. There are a handful of kids out. Four or five girls in Afro puffs and braids are playing a complicated game involving a jump rope, a rhyme, and a clapping component. Three teenage boys are riding their bikes up and down the sidewalk, yelling. It’s mostly how Sam remembers it. Some of the details have changed—there’s a Duane Reade where there used to be a deli, a TD Bank where there used to be a barber shop, but the atmosphere is similar.

“This is it,” Sam says, pointing to a door he’s burst through innumerable times. He still has the key. The lobby looks a little run down but the soft light of the sun through the wavy window panes softens the grime into more favorable, nostalgic beauty. “This is where I grew up,” he says, looking at Steve.

Steve is hardly paying attention to their surroundings; he’s smiling at Sam like Sam’s done something miraculous. If he keeps that up, they won’t have to tell his mama anything. She’ll know the moment she opens the door.

“Third floor,” Sam says. Suddenly, Sam’s feeling a little nervous himself. He should have called, warned her. That’s what she’ll say. Why didn’t he call first? He fiddles with his phone for a second, before putting it away. It’s fine. Whatever. They ascend the steps and walk to the last apartment on the hallway, the one with two walls full of windows because it’s a corner apartment. “You ready?” Sam asks, his hand raised and ready to knock.

Steve nods, looking grim. Maybe he’s thinking of this as facing down a squadron of evil robots or another gun in the face. Whatever works, Sam supposes. He knocks on the door, three sharp raps and waits.

 A short woman with a soft halo of cottony curls and reading glasses on the very tip of her nose answers the door. She’s wearing latex gloves and a frown.

“Hey, Mama,” Sam says, taking in her house dress and old, faded slippers.

“Samuel Wilson,” Darlene says, “what did I tell you about dropping by someone’s house without calling?”

“I wanted to surpr—”

“Suppose me and your daddy were in here doing grown folk’s business?” she demands.

“Ugh, Mama!”

“As it is, your sister’s here. I’m giving her a hot oil treatment. Post-partum shedding like crazy. Same thing happened to me when I had you. All my hair fell out.” She pulls at her fluffy curls. “No one tells you what having kids will do to your hair. I pulled most of it out running behind y’all children. And you were the worst of the bunch!”

“Mama,” Sam says, laughing. “I brought somebody to meet you.” He tugs on Steve’s arm to pull him into view.

Steve’s cheeks are pink and he looks suddenly very young. “Hi,” he says, ducking his head.

Darlene narrows her eyes. “Not only did you not call; you brought guests?” She swats Sam’s arm. “Boy, where are your manners?” And then to Steve, “Hey, baby, I taught him better than this. Guess he went out and got brand new on me.”

The flush on Steve’s cheeks has spread to his neck. “He’s—” he manages, before Darlene waves her hand.

“Don’t even try to defend him. Come on in here.” She turns back into the apartment and hollers, “Sarah! It’s Sam and he brought a friend.”

From the depths of the apartment, Sarah yells back, “Without calling? What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing. He’s okay.” Darlene turns back to Sam as if to confirm this statement. He nods. “Guess heroes don’t gotta call. They just show up.”

“Mama--,” Sam starts again, but Darlene isn’t hearing it.

“Steve, do you want anything. Water, juice?”

“No ma’am, I’m fine.”

“I’d offer to show you the place, but _somebody_ didn’t call, so everything’s in a state. We’re in the back bedroom. And Sarah’s gonna be mad at you,” Darlene says, pointing at Sam. “Getting her hair done when she meets Steve. She had such a crush on you when she was a kid. Hell, they both did.”

“Mama!” Sam all but yelps.

She flashes a feline grin. “If you’d called, you could’ve told me what topics were on the no-no list.”

“Fine,” Sam says, “I’ve learned my lesson.”

Steve is doing stoic better than a Greek statue right now, but Sam can tell he wants to laugh. He jabs him in the ribs and mutters, “Shut up,” before following his mother into the back bedroom—the room that used to be his when he lived here.

Sarah is sitting in a high chair with a hairdresser smock around her neck. Her long coily hair is pulled into four pigtails and she’s bent over a magazine. When Darlene turns off the TV, Sarah looks up and her eyes go wide. “Sam,” she shrieks in distress. “I look like an idiot!”

“You look beautiful,” Sam says, coming fully into the room and kissing her forehead.

She returns his kiss with a swat to the head, before turning to Steve with a smile. “Hi, Steve, Sam’s told us a lot about you.”

Steve grins. “Uh-oh, Sam’s seen me first thing in the morning. That can’t be good.”

Sarah smooths her pigtails self-consciously.

Darlene picks up an applicator bottle full of olive oil and starts running the oil through a section of Sarah’s hair. “What do y’all have planned for the day?” she asks. “You gonna sit around here while I do Sarah’s hair?”

“Where are Jody and Olivia?” Sam asks.

“Jody’s taking a nap,” Sarah says, “and I sent Olivia to stay with Ethan’s mom for the day. That baby’s got the lungs of an opera singer and I _hate_ opera.”

Sam pats his sister’s arm sympathetically. “She’ll be talking soon; won’t have to communicate in screams.”

“God, I hope so. What are you doing in New York anyway?”

“I need Tony to fix my wings.”

Sarah snickers. “It’s still weird. You calling the Avengers by their first names. You being an Avenger.” She turns to Steve. “All he talked about when we were kids was being in the Howling Commandoes, being a hero like Gabe Jones and Captain America.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “I talked about other stuff.”

“Yeah, like what?”

“I wasn’t the one with a cardboard cut-out of him in my room.”

“Only because you had the bed sheets!”

“Oh yeah, well I didn’t--” Sam stops short, remembering that he’s an adult and shouldn’t get into a bickering match with his sister about who loved Captain America more in their youth, especially with Captain America—sorry, _Steve Rogers—_ standing right here.

Darlene continues separating Sarah’s curls, plucking at tangles with her fingers. “What’s wrong with your wings, baby?” she asks. “What’s Tony gotta fix?”

“It’s nothing major,” Sam assures her. “I’ve lost some weight. Just need to adjust for that.”

Darlene looks him up and down. “I thought you looked too skinny. They don’t have any grocery stores and restaurants in D.C.? Trying to get a shoulder-waist ratio like this one?” She points at Steve, who promptly flushes a magenta shade Sam didn’t know existed in nature. Steve clasps his hands in front of him and Sam can tell he wants to be holding his shield, to give himself the semblance of protection from Darlene’s brand of caring.

“Yeah, Mama. D.C. is fresh out of food and I wanna look like a Dorito.”

“Hey!” Steve says, punching Sam’s arm.

“Is it ‘Smack Sam Day’ and I didn’t get the memo,” he asks, rubbing where Steve hit him. Even Steve’s playful hits pack some heat. Steve’s face immediately goes from teasing to concerned, and Sam rolls his eyes to say he’s fine.

He sees his mother and sister exchange a look and he really doesn’t want to deal with that right now, so he says louder than he means to, “Anyway, looks like you two are busy, so….” He reaches out to grab Steve by the belt loop, but that gesture will only add fuel to the fire of meaningful looks he’s getting from Darlene and Sarah, so he lets his hand fall. “Lots of New York to see before Sunday night, and Steve’s got a whole list of things.”

Darlene smiles. “Y’all should swing by the barbershop. Your daddy’s there now, and you could use an edge-up yourself.”

“My hair looks fine,” Sam says, running his hand over his close-cropped hair.

“What do you think, Steve?” Sarah says. “Does Sam’s hair meet military standards?”

“Um—” Steve says, flushing like a fire hydrant.

Sarah and Darlene laugh and Sam is regretting this whole adventure.

“Okay, we’re just gonna go now. Love you, Ma; see ya, Sis. This has been great. Really great. Say hi to the kids and Ethan. Tell Dad I stopped by.” As he’s speaking, he’s backing out of the bedroom. “Steve,” he says from the hallway and Steve nods at Darlene and Sarah before following him out.

“Wait,” Darlene calls. “While I have you here, there’s some stuff I was gonna send you in the mail—”

“Mama, I don’t wanna carry something around all day.”

Darlene gives him a sharp look and he stops complaining. “Fine.”

Darlene goes into the hall closet and pulls out a small box. It already has Sam’s D.C. address in Sharpee across the front. “It’s been sitting here since you moved down there. Keep forgetting to give it to you.” Darlene hands it over.

Sam shakes it gently. “What is it?”

Darlene glances at Steve before saying, “Just some things you didn’t take with you.”

That means Riley stuff. After Riley died, Sam had tried coming back to Harlem, but it was like every corner was haunted with a memory; they’d spent a lot of their leave time in Harlem over the years. Sam moved to D.C. for a lot of reasons, but running away was number one. “Yeah, okay,” he says heavily. “Thanks, Mama.”

She kisses his cheek and squeezes Steve’s arm. “Y’all be safe, now. I don’t like all I’m hearing coming out of Washington these days. Might need to go down there myself and have a word with some senators.”

Steve’s jaw clenches.

“It’ll all blow over,” Sam says, more to Steve than his mother. “Everything will be fine.”

“I’m sure it will, baby. But you say the word and I’ll talk some sense into ‘em.”

“Thanks, Mama,” Sam says.

Darlene walks them to the door. Steve goes through first, but Darlene catches Sam by his shirt before he can follow. “Sam,” she says and she doesn’t have to say anything else. It’s written in the crinkle of her brow.

“I’m an adult, Mama,” Sam says.

“Adults can be stupid, too.”

“Yeah, well…” Sam shifts his grip on the box of Riley’s things, “Let me be stupid.”

Darlene hugs him a beat longer than usual before pushing him through the door, where Steve is waiting with a puzzled expression.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

“That wasn’t so bad,” Steve says.

Sam doesn’t say what he’s thinking, which is “Bad enough.” He’s holding a box of terrible memories under his arm and his mama is about to start a phone campaign to find out what’s going on between him and Steve.

“Wanna go to Central Park?” he asks. “Just sit down for a beat?”

“Yeah, okay,” Steve says. Sam can feel him watching him, so he smiles.

“I know some pretty private places in Central Park,” he says, wiggling his eye brows.

Steve grins. “Oh really?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know what you're thinking: too much talking, not enough kissing. And I totally agree. "Kiss, you fools!" I said as I wrote this, but in the end, plot and dialogue prevailed. ;D


	4. This Is My Beloved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Nat talk about the Registration Act and things don't go so well. Sam and Steve do less talking and things go much better.

When Steve and Sam step off the elevator, Nat and Tony are sitting on the sofa, wearing similarly worried expressions. They turn as the door dings and Natasha fixes her face faster than Tony, but Sam feels like they walked in on a serious talk.

“You’re early,” Tony says, checking his watch.

“Sam got tired,” Steve says, shrugging out of his jacket.

“No,” Sam objects, “I didn’t want to go to Queens.”

“What’s in Queens?” Tony asks. “Besides suburbs and the airports, that is.”

Steve shakes his head. “I just wanted to get to all the boroughs.”

Tony looks unimpressed. “To each his own,” he mutters. Then, “Jarvis, put on some music. Dinner party appropriate.”

“Yes, sir.”

The early strains of something orchestral starts and Tony gestures toward the dining room.

“New dress?” Steve asks Natasha, who’s draped in black silk and a long, pendant necklace.

“Shopping with Maria,” she says. She holds out her wrist. “New bracelet, too.”

Steve admires the bracelet, lifting Natasha’s arm so the gems sparkle in the light. Sam catches Natasha’s eye and she smiles. It’s an odd sort of smile, uninterpretable.

“Did you invite Maria to dinner?” he asks. Sam likes Agent Hill and would like to see more of her in non-mission situations. Funnily, Rhodey talks about her enough that Sam feels like he knows her very well. He’s still waiting for Rhodey to realize he has a huge crush on Maria, but the guy is remarkably imperceptive sometimes.

“I didn’t,” Nat says. “She’s already on a flight back to D.C.”

“A shame,” Tony says curtly.

Sam and Steve both look at Tony questioningly, but he ignores their curiosity. He pulls out a chair at the dining table and sits. “I had a profound discussion with Jarvis about what constitutes American cuisine and we finally agreed we should do a melting pot of sorts, to pay homage to that not-quite realized vision of American utopia. So,” he waves his hands at the table laden with dishes from various cuisines.

“Eclectic,” Nat says, taking the seat across from Tony.

Sam and Steve take the remaining seats. Sam still has the Riley box and he sets it under his chair. Something feels off in the room, but he can’t put his finger on it. He tries to push the feeling away, asks Tony about his wings.

“They’re good, they’re good,” Tony says.

“You didn’t add anything too fancy, right?” Steve teases.

“Like an artificial intelligence bent on human genocide?” Tony quips. “No, I didn’t add anything fancy. Come for an oil change. I give you an oil change. I’m just a mechanic.”

Sam exchanges a look with Nat. Tony seems extra testy tonight.

Conversation is stilted for a few minutes after this, until Sam mentions all the construction in Harlem and Hell’s Kitchen. Nat asks if he’s heard about the one they call Daredevil and they spend the rest of dinner trading rumors about powered people in the city. By some tacit agreement, no one mentions the Superhero Registration Act, for which Sam is grateful.

After dinner, Tony excuses himself to go video call Pepper and Nat, Sam, and Steve take the elevator to the floor below where their rooms are. Steve says he’s going to take a shower and lopes down the hall to the room on the end. Sam and Nat’s rooms are on the opposite side of the elevator.

“Good night, Sam,” Nat says, before slipping into her room. Sam catches the doorknob before it closes and Nat turns around, raises a perfectly arched brow in questioning surprise. “Sam,” she says. She folds her arms across her chest and doesn’t move to let him further into the room.

“Natasha.” Sam checks the empty hall. “What’s going on?”

“What are you talking about?” she asks. She looks smaller than usual, dainty and meek. If Sam didn’t know she was a super spy, he’d trust the cluelessness in her eyes.

“You and Tony were talking about something heavy before Steve and I came in. You wanted to meet Agent Hill, but not in D.C. where we all live. You’ve been on lots of phone calls, even though you hate talking on the phone. And I know why _I’m_ avoiding the news, but I can’t think you’re trying to sidestep riling Steve up. _You_ love rattling his cage. So, I have to conclude, something’s wrong.”

Nat smiles, relaxes her posture, and turns away from Sam. She twirls her hair into a bun and walks to the vanity, removing her earrings. They clink when she places them in the little glass jewelry dish. “I distinctly remember you saying you would make a terrible spy on several occasions,” she says. She sits in front of the vanity and starts applying a cold cream to her face. “And I have to agree, actually. You’re turning little nothings into a big something that doesn’t exist.”

Sam pushes his hands into his pockets and leans against the door. He shakes his head. Nat’s doing a great job of making him feel stupid and paranoid in spite of himself. “Nat, you can tell me if something’s wrong. We’re friends.”

Nat wipes the cream from half her face in one swipe of the cloth, revealing dewy pink, make-up-less skin. “I don’t always have the luxury of friends,” she says, wiping the other side of her face.

“You’ve got me. And Steve.”

“I didn’t always. I might not always.”

Sam rocks on his heels. Nat talks like this sometimes. It’s a wall she puts up because life has taught her that she can’t have closeness. She probably says the same sort of thing to Clint.  “Look,” he says, “if you tell me it’s nothing more than some super spy stuff that’s not going so well, I’ll believe you. I wouldn’t know you were lying anyway.”

“How can you be friends with someone you can’t trust?” she asks. She’s looking at him in the mirror instead of turning around.

Sam frowns. “I trust you. I trust that you’ll tell me the truth, but I’m not stupid enough to think I would ever know you were lying.” He smiles. “It might not be the most flattering analogy, but I think it’s a little like those animal trainers who put their hands in the lion’s mouth.”

“Trusting the animal to go against its instincts?”

Sam shakes his head. “Your instinct isn’t to lie, Nat. It’s to protect and to fight the good fight. I just mean, the trainer knows the lion could snap off his hand, but he trusts that she won’t. I know you could convince me of anything, but,” he smiles, “I trust that you won’t.”

“I won’t?” she says. She holds Sam’s gaze for a long moment in the mirror, before she unclasps her necklace and sets it in the jewelry dish with her earrings. “Will you unzip me?” she asks. “One of Tony’s robots helped me earlier. I wasn’t a fan.”

“Cold hands?” Sam asks, crossing the room.

“Very.”

Nat stands and Sam unzips the dress to mid-back. Nat holds the straps between her fingers and Sam notices her bitten nails. She stands with her head bowed, unmoving, and Sam is struck again at the level of vulnerability she allows herself with him. Sure, she could probably kill him a dozen different ways right now, completely unarmed, but the gesture is meaningful. He wants to hug her, wrap her in his arms and abscond to some island where none of life’s ugly problems can travel, but she probably wouldn’t take it too kindly and that isn’t how life works anyway. And what had Sam’s therapist said so many times after Riley? _You can’t save everyone._ Which Sam knows. He couldn’t save Riley. He hasn’t saved Bucky. He’s only managed to get Steve to agree not to get himself killed on a mission, but he probably hasn’t actually reached the root of the problem there. Sam can’t save everyone. He cups Nat’s shoulder.

“This is the part where I say, ‘Are you sure everything’s okay?” and you say, ‘It’s nothing, Sam. It’s just super spy stuff.’ And then I’ll believe you and I’ll let you finish undressing.” He smiles. “I’ll start: Are you sure everything’s okay, Nat?”

She turns around, still holding her straps up. She bites her lip as she looks at him. “Tony’s going to go on the Today Show and if they ask him, he’s going to endorse the Registration Act.”

“Fuck.”

“And I agree with him.”

“Oh fuck.”

Sam’s hand falls from Nat’s shoulder.

“I talked to Maria today, but she’s toeing Fury’s party line. Maybe looking to relocate S.H.I.E.L.D. to Canada. We know how Steve feels about the bill. That leaves you.”

Sam swallows. “Nat, what good can come from this registration?”

She smiles. “So you’re with Steve. That’s what Tony assumed, too.”

“I make up my own mind, Natasha. You know that.”

“Didn’t you say, ‘I do what he does, just slower’?” she asks. “You’ll be on his side by the end of it; I already know.”

“Side?” Sam says, angry with her assumption, but trying to stay focused on the bigger issue. “Nat, there are no sides. It’s a handful of politicians using fearmongering to get brownie points with their idiot constituents in Middle America. These are the same people that wanted to put you in jail after you dumped S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets on the internet.”

Nat tilts her head. “They had a point, didn’t they?”

“Natasha!” Sam says, exasperated and confused.

“And I’m just a human. I don’t have super strength or X-ray vision.”

“Nat, they’re asking heroes to write their secret identities on a piece of paper. How is that an answer to anything? The villains won’t obey the law and the poor idiot heroes who go along with it are just making themselves vulnerable.”

“Is it heroes who need protecting or is it the American public?” Natasha demands. “The public has a right to feel safe- - like we’re not above them and above the law. It’s a gesture of good faith. And if we’re not doing anything wrong, who cares if the government is watching us?”

“Watching us? So this is the Patriot Act all over again?”

“God, Sam, you really are on Steve’s side.”

Sam clenches his fist, finally good and angry. “Nat, you don’t even sound like yourself. Good faith? Coming from the woman who trusts no one. Coming from the woman who has been helping to weed HYDRA out of governments all over the world for a year and a half?”

“No one elects us, Sam. We just go out and decide who the bad guys are. What if we’re wrong? Sometimes bad guys and good guys look the same.”

“Oh I see,” Sam says, taking a step back. “You just want someone else to blame if it turns out you’re still the bad guy.”

“And you just do everything Steve tells you to do.”

Sam opens his mouth to protest, then exhales loudly. “I gotta go. I don’t wanna—let’s not talk about this anymore.” He backs away, leaves Natasha standing in the middle of the room, clutching the straps of her dress, staring at the ground.

He closes the door, leans against it, and takes a deep breath. _Fuck._

Sam has never had a fight with Natasha before, not even about what to watch on TV or if the Chinese place on 19th Street is better than the one on 7th. She’s good at it, arguing. She made him mad in a few carefully chosen words, one suggestion that Sam isn’t his own man. Which apparently Tony also thinks. Great. That’s probably not going to eat him up inside indefinitely.

And now he’s rethinking everything that’s happened in the last year and a half. How he threw himself into Steve’s fight because _that’s goddamn Captain America_! and then after that, because he loved him.

But Sam doesn’t take Steve’s side on things without thinking. He takes the side of right, and Steve just happens to be there, too. And Nat’s always been with them till now. And as much as Sam has tried to avoid the Superhero Registration Act these last few weeks, it’s pushing its way into and messing up everything.

He stands outside Natasha’s door for a long minute, his thoughts whizzing like cars on a highway. He debates going to his room, sleeping alone, but he and Steve haven’t slept apart since _I love you_. He should at least say good night.

He knocks on Steve’s door and tries to spirit away his frown.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks when he opens the door.

Sam grimaces. “Why does something have to be wrong?”

Steve studies his expression through narrowed eyes, his lashes long and dark. “You look weird,” he finally says.

“Damn, Steve, is this how you woo a guy? Because it needs work.” Sam grins and hopes it’s not obvious his heart’s not in it. He can’t lie nearly as well as Natasha, but he’s miles better than Steve and he hopes that’s enough.

Steve continues to scrutinize him like a specimen under the microscope.

“God, Steve, let me in,” Sam says. “You got someone in there you don’t want me to see?”

“What were you talking to Nat about?” Steve asks, his eyes dark with suspicion.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Believe it or not, Steve, Nat and I are friends even when you’re not in the room.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

Sam sighs. It’s dumb. He knows he can’t protect Steve from what’s coming, from what he and Nat have just discussed. Even more than that, he knows he shouldn’t lie to him, not about this or anything, if they have a hope of this relationship—whatever it will be—working out. And hasn’t Sam already learned this lesson? That Steve is an adult. It’s one thing to ask Steve not to court death in the field, quite another to hide information from him because it’s upsetting. Is that the kind of partner Sam wants to be? Overprotective and duplicitous?

And is he doing this for Steve or is it his own peace of mind he’d like to preserve? Because Sam knows without a shadow of doubt that if he tells Steve what Nat just said, Steve is going to march down the hallway and give Nat and Tony a piece of his mind. And then he’s going to give Sam a piece of his mind. And then maybe he’s going to go down to Congress and give all those politicians a piece of his mind, too. And Sam doesn’t want to deal with it right now. Call it avoidance, call it denial, call it whatever. So he looks Steve in the eye and says, “Nat wanted to show me a listicle of extreme makeover pictures on Buzzfeed.”

Steve shakes his head. “Buzzfeed is such a garbage website.”

“Says the guy who takes all their quizzes.”

“Cultural education, Sam. Gotta know what the kids are into.”

Sam laughs and it feels genuine. Steve can do that. Without even trying, he can take the knot in Sam’s chest and turn it into a Christmas bow. “You gonna let me in?” he asks, reaching out to poke Steve in the ribs.

Steve opens the door and steps back. “I think Tony will get an idea what’s going on here if you spend the night,” he says.

“Who says I’m spending the night?”

Steve pulls him into a kiss, his lips warm and soft. “I think I can get you to stay,” he murmurs.

“And I think I don’t give a damn what Tony does or does not know about us.”

Steve kisses his temple. “ _Now_ look who sounds reckless.”

Sam shrugs. “I strapped on a pair of wings and flew over enemy territory for two years,” he points out. “I think I was little out of my mind even before I met you.”

“You have to be in this hero business,” Steve says. “And in other areas.”

“Like loooovvvvee?” Sam asks in a mocking tone.

Steve pulls him into a headlock. “You said it first, you know? I don’t think you’re allowed to be so flippant.”

Sam tickles Steve’s sides until he releases him, both of them panting with laughter. “Fine,” Sam says, “you have to be reckless in love sometimes, too. Happy?”

“Yes,” Steve answers, flashing a smile that could melt a pound of chocolate like nothing.

“You’re so sincere,” Sam says, laughing. He kisses Steve and then dances out of his grasp before things can escalate. “What should we call ourselves anyhow? When Tony finds out? I’ve always thought ‘partners’ sounded too ambiguous and ‘boyfriend’ is so high school.”

“Lovers,” Steve suggests, grinning. He reaches for Sam again and again Sam dances away.

“Yeah, we’ll tell Tony we’re lovers.” Sam makes a face. “And that you write me long poems from the Western Front.”

“People don’t say ‘lovers’ anymore?” Steve asks, clearly not caring one way or another as he approaches Sam, who is rapidly running out of room between Steve and the bed.

“Yeah, teenagers who think they’re going to marry their first love.”

Steve stops short. “But you are my first love, Sam.”

Sam blinks, shocked by the admission and, more importantly, the casualness and sincerity with which it’s confessed.

“Peggy—” he says.

Steve smiles fondly. “My almost love,” he says with such tenderness Sam would be jealous if not for the confession he made literally two seconds ago. Steve smiles at Sam. “I think you would have really liked each other,” he says.

Sam scrambles for something to say that isn’t trite, but Steve takes advantage of his temporary stillness to push him on to the bed. He follows after him, kissing every inch of skin within reach. Between kisses, he continues, “I’ve noticed a certain vagueness of terminology is normal these days. People say ‘they’re talking’ to mean their dating or that they’re ‘together’ to mean they’re serious, but not married.” He reaches Sam’s lips. “Let’s say we’re together.”

Sam nods, repeats, “Together.”

“Which means,” Steve says, reaching between them to undo Sam’s belt, “honesty, trust, loyalty, patience, all those sincere words you young folk turn your nose up at.”

“You know, in years experienced, I _am_ older than you.” Sam bats Steve’s hands away from his pants, because this time is not going to be like the last when Steve gave him the best blow job of his life and got nothing in return.

“I’ve experienced enough,” Steve says, then grunts in surprise as Sam manages to flip them over.

Sam grins. “There’s still so much to teach you. I think I promised to show you the meaning of slow actually.”

The color is rising in Steve’s cheeks. “You did,” he says.

“But while we’re still talking relationship parameters, I think you have to talk to all the tabloids about those stupid headlines saying you and Tony are a thing. Or you and Natasha. Or you and that girl—the one whose friends with Dr. Foster.”

“Darcy,” Steve says.

“You guys were in one picture together and E! hasn’t let it go. You’d think the tabloids would’ve made a bigger deal out of you living with me. I want sordid headlines with racy speculation on _our_ sex life.”

“Really?” Steve asks, wrinkling his nose.

Sam leans forward and kisses Steve soundly. “Actually, I’ll settle for the real thing.” He runs his hands down Steve’s chest, over the taut fabric of his tight, white T-shirt. He tweaks Steve nipples and Steve laughs. “You are painted into this shirt,” Sam says, enjoying the feel of Steve’s hard muscles and super soldier heat. He leans down to kiss the hollow at the base of Steve’s throat, before planting soft kisses from him jaw to his collarbone and back. Steve tilts his head to give Sam better access, making little rumbling noises of pleasure that vibrate against Sam’s lips. Sam explores the impressive breadth of Steve’s chest, before lifting his head to ask, “Do you think you can get out of this thing on your own or will we have to bring in a surgeon?”

“Ha ha ha,” Steve says drily before lifting his shirt over his head one-handed. “What’s your excuse? Too many buttons?”

Sam laughs, reaches for the collar of his button-down, but Steve beats him to it and unfastens it in record time. Sam shrugs out of the sleeves and slips out of his undershirt. “Ta da,” he says, feeling as giddy as a teenager.

Maybe it’s wanting to forget his argument with Natasha or all the various problems that are building, building, building or maybe Steve’s pecs are just that good. Either way, Sam wants this.

Bad.

He wants to make Steve forget and to forget a little himself. He places his hand over Steve’s thundering heart and smiles. “I love you,” he says, feeling both shockingly vulnerable and wonderfully happy at once. It’s something like flying—with nothing but his wings and his wits to keep him alive. It doesn’t matter that he’s said it before, that he knows Steve loves him, too. Loving someone is dangerous. Exhilarating precisely because so much is at stake.

Steve brings Sam’s palm to his mouth, places a hot kiss in the center of his hand. He drags his lips down to the sensitive skin of Sam’s wrist, slowly pulling Sam forward until Sam has to brace himself on Steve’s thigh or fall over. The muscles of Steve’s leg are dense and taut beneath his sweatpants and now that Sam is paying attention, he can see the outline of Steve’s dick pressing against the gray fabric. He looks up at Steve. Steve’s eyes are dark with what can only be described as lust—a word Sam has always found too biblical and primeval for his tastes—but the naked desire in Steve’s eyes says, _I want to know you_ and all Sam can think of is that verse from the Bible: _His mouth is most sweet: he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend._ His heart pounds in his ears and his skin is aching to be touched. But first—

“Lie back,” he says.

Steve drops to the mattress without hesitation and Sam presses a soft kiss to his lips. When Steve tries to deepen it, Sam pulls away, whispers, “Slowly.” Steve obliges for all of three seconds before he’s trying to lick into Sam’s mouth again. “You’re terrible at this,” Sam murmurs.

“Say that to your dick,” Steve rejoins, bringing his hand up to cup Sam through his jeans.

Sam allows himself a brief moment to be touched before he says (in a voice hoarser than he would have liked), “Take off your pants.”

Steve obeys immediately, smiling like he’s won a prize.

“Boxers, too,” Sam says, laughing at Steve’s eagerness.

“I thought we were going slow,” Steve says, shimmying out of his plaid underwear.

Sam ignores the taunt and straddles Steve’s bare legs. He presses a kiss to the center of Steve’s perfect chest, then takes Steve’s dick in a loose grip, so loose he’s barely touching him. Steve sighs and waits with a half-smile on his face. He manages maybe five seconds before he’s wiggling his hips to urge Sam along. Sam starts with an unhurried drag of his palm along Steve’s dick, still barely touching him, doing just enough to make him fidget. When Steve rolls his hips for more contact, Sam takes his hand away entirely.

Steve laughs breathlessly. “Okay, Sam, you’re good at slow. Can we—” He loses the thread of his words when Sam traces the outline of his dick with one finger. “Fuck,” he murmurs.

Sam brushes the underside with his knuckles, glides his hands along the jut of his hip bones, the fullness of his balls. Steve makes a frustrated noise and wiggles his hips again. “Sam,” he breathes out shakily.

Sam leans forward to kiss him, to reassure him that he’ll take care of him. In counterpoint to his gentle touches below the waist, Sam kisses Steve fiercely—tongues and teeth and gasping breaths. When Steve tries to get some friction against Sam’s jeans though, Sam pulls away. “No cheating,” he says, resuming his light, slow petting.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Steve says through gritted teeth.

“Do you want me to stop?” Sam asks. “Because we can stop.”

Steve bucks his hips and his jaw is clenched as he says, “I want you to go faster.”

Sam tweaks Steve’s nipple, continues his excruciating pace with a smile.

It doesn’t take long before Steve is unraveling before Sam’s eyes, dragging in shuddering breaths, writhing and begging. “More,” he pleads, then, “Harder, Sam, you have to—I have to—oh—”

Sam’s hands glisten with Steve’s pre-cum and Steve is dewy with sweat. In fact, he finally sounds like a normal guy in physically strenuous circumstances. His chest is rising and falling, his abs showing in stark relief as he tenses, trying to hold himself still, but desperate for more contact. He finally breaks, brings his hand up to touch himself, but Sam grabs his wrist and presses it into the mattress. Steve groans, “Fuuucckkk,” but keeps his hands on the blanket, twisting his fingers into the sheets as Sam strokes him with feathery light caresses

“Sam,” he begs, “I should co—I have to—Touch me, please, please touch me.”

“I am touching you,” Sam says, sweeping his thumbs over the head of Steve’s dick. Steve jerks forward, puts his hand over his mouth to muffle the noises he’s making. Sam grabs his wrist again. “I want to hear you,” he says.

But Steve is almost incapable of speech at this point, his vocabulary whittled down to two words—if ‘oh’ counts as a word. ‘Please’ certainly counts and Sam is grinning, thinking of all Steve’s heroic, inspiring speeches over the years, all the ‘calls to action’ that have been mimicked by politicians and generals the world over. In one of his biographies, Steve was called “inspirational, composed, and articulate.” And look at him now. Cheeks and chest flushed; hips thrusting up in search of more friction, more sensation; eyes closed; whispering in ragged breaths, “Oh please oh please oh please please oh please _please._ ” His thighs are trembling hard enough to make the bed shake and he has thoroughly ruined the bedclothes. His abs are tightening, his chest shaking, his legs stiffening. He’s right there, right on the cusp. He’s not even begging anymore, just panting _Ahhhh ahhhh ahhhaaahhh!_ And Sam has mercy on him, tightens his grip and speeds up his strokes and it’s a matter of seconds before Steve’s lips part and he’s cumming all over Sam’s hand, his hips jerking rhythmlessly, moving the entire bed from the wall, literally sitting up with the force of his orgasm. His eyes are unfocused as he falls back on to the bed, completely limp and Sam has never seen a more beautiful person in his life. He wants a picture of Steve just like this, fucked out and gorgeous

Sam wipes his hands on Steve’s discarded shirt, dabs at the splatters on Steve’s torso. Steve grunts. With his eyes still closed, he pulls Sam to him and wraps his arms around him. “Your turn,” he rasps.

‘Dude,” Sam laughs, “you can barely stay awake.”

“Just let me catch my breath,” Steve promises. “I’ll be good to go in a minute.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Sure, sure,” he says, snuggling in close to Steve’s side, ignoring his hard-on for the moment. Steve’s breathing evens out, turns slow and deep like he’s falling asleep and even though Sam hasn’t come, he’s enveloped in Steve’s post-orgasm glow, being pulled down into satisfied sleepiness. Which is interrupted maybe thirty seconds later by Steve slapping his hands on his thighs and pushing Sam on to his back.

“Okay,” he says, “your turn.”

And Sam can’t believe his eyes. “How are you already hard?” he demands.

Steve grins. “Guess I’m just fast.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't like that Nat is going to be on the other side during CACW. It physically pains me. She and Steve are canonically proven bros and her friendship with Sam can only have grown in the last couple years. 
> 
> Also, I think Steve having a super fast refractory period is really hilarious, so I played it for laughs here. 
> 
> Final also, I'm no good at writing Tony (confession: not my favorite character) so I tried to avoid it as much as possible, so I wouldn't do him TOO much of an injustice, characterization and voice-wise.


	5. Overreacting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has been trying to pretend the Registration Act won't come to anything, but that's not really an option anymore.

The train ride back to D.C. is absurd with both Sam and Nat pretending like they’re not seething at one another. Nat’s better at it, there’s no doubt. Even Sam starts to believe her, starts to think maybe he shouldn’t be so mad, but then he remembers “You just do everything Steve tells you to do” and his anger coagulates into a thick clot in his chest. And he has to take a deep breath and smile at Nat’s small talk, add his own colorful commentary on Tony’s apartment aesthetics or the crowds at Union Station.

And all so they don’t upset Steve.

No, that’s not fair. Sam isn’t protecting Steve. Not _really._ He’s protecting himself; Sam is fully invested in maintaining the fragile bubble of peace that he has fought tooth and nail to achieve. The last week has been quiet on all fronts, except the Registration Act. No Big Bads have arrived to challenge the Avengers for the soul of America; Fury hasn’t asked Sam to fly down to Texas or Arkansas to help with a Black Lives Matter march; no new problems have arisen at the VA. And even after fighting with Natasha last night, Sam has to cling to the notion that the trouble with the Registration Act is evitable, that there is still time to throw some switch to send the train careening down another track.

Sam clutches the box his mama gave him yesterday. The brown cardboard with the black pen strokes of his mother’s handwriting is so ordinary. The box could contain cookies, a birthday present, a whole case of those peppermint sticks Sam can’t find anywhere but the corner store in Harlem. Sam has many such boxes stacked in the recycling bin he never empties under the kitchen sink. But this box, this ordinary brown box, holds the last of Riley, the parts of Riley his good-for-nothing parents couldn’t – no, wouldn’t – bury in that Mississippi cemetery plot.

The sunglasses Riley always wore with the rainbow frames. Ugly as hell, and against regulation, so every time he wore them, the whole squad had to do push-ups. Riley didn’t care; he said he was making them all strong. He’d do his push-ups laughing, one-handed. He’d yell out to the rest of the group, “The grunts think us flyboys are soft. They think we got it easy. I’m helping to mend our reputation!” The lilting drawl of his Mississippi accent usually helped smooth things over and if not that, his smile would. Or the way he threw around compliments like spare change.

“Garcia, you’re looking splendid,” he’d shout as Airman Garcia scowled at him, finishing up her fifty push-ups. Or, “Wilson, I’d marry you if it wasn’t against the law. You look damn good over there.” And Sam would get all hot and squirmy inside and he’d have to remind himself Riley talked like that to everyone. And besides, Sam had a girlfriend back home. Misty. And he wasn’t even sure he liked guys like that.

There’s a letter in the box, too. Riley asked Sam to write it for him one night when they were sitting under the stars on some roof in Harlem between their first and second tour. Riley said his hands shook too bad when he thought about Mississippi and his parents, when he thought about how he might not get back there. It had upset Sam to hear Riley talk like that: they were safe in New York at the time and for Sam, Harlem was as much Riley’s home as his. They never spent any of their time together in Mississippi, which told its own story. But he’d written the letter anyway because Riley asked him to and he would’ve done anything for Riley.

It’s a letter Riley’s parents don’t deserve and one they wouldn’t accept, not from Sam, who they suspected had caused their son to be gay and dead, even though Riley had been openly gay well before he met Sam and had died in spite of him.

Riley could have been a writer in another life, Sam had thought as he took down his words that night on the rooftop, so lyrical and composed. Like a symphony swelling, like a ballerina twirling.

Riley had told his parents that he loved them, that he sometimes wished he could have loved a Tammy or a Laurel Anne for them. Had asked: wasn’t it enough that he’d been good at football and joined the military, that he was willing to come home and run for office, even if he ran as a Democrat, even if he’d marry a guy some day? He’d asked them why _he_ wasn’t enough and why their love was so malnourished, so flimsy, feeble, and small. He said he was glad he was the gay son and not his brother James, because he didn’t want James to know what it felt like to be so flayed and eviscerated by his parents’ cold, cold disapproval. He told them that if they ever got this letter, it was because he was dead – taken down by the skies of Afghanistan or the cold sea of their love was yet to be determined – and he hoped that they wouldn’t read his letter as a guilt trip, but as a balm because he forgave them. He forgave them and he wished them well.

 When Riley stopped talking, stopped confessing, Sam had asked if he wanted to read the letter for himself (surreptitiously wiping tears from his cheeks).

“Nah,” Riley said. He smiled. “That was just me sucking out the poison. I ain’t fool enough to drink it up again.”

And that had been that.

Sam and Misty had broken up over Riley, that summer between tours. Well, they had broken up because it was hard to maintain a long-distance relationship. That was the official line, the party line they both stuck to. But it had been Riley. Misty had asked if there wasn’t something a little more than friendly between the two of them. And Sam had pshawed and laughed and protested, but never _denied_ it. And Misty had been angry. Lord, she’d been angry. And she’d said she wasn’t going to compete with the guy Sam saw every day, that she didn’t deserve to come second-place. Misty was like a diamond as she said it, cold and hard.

Sam hated that he’d done that to Misty – although he hadn’t _done_ anything, he’d say if only to himself – and he punished himself for it. He punished himself by picking fights with Riley, by withholding himself from Riley, by never once saying he loved him. With years of distance from it, Sam knew he had wanted to prove Misty wrong. To say, _See, you broke up with me over Riley, but Riley and I were just friends. See! I wasted that last year of his life loving him like a flower loves the sun, but we never kissed, we never held hands, we never said the words or did the deed of those words, so I was right and you were wrong. See!_

God, Sam, was it worth it?

“Huh?” Sam asks, realizing that Steve has spoken to him.

“I said, is it worth it? To go see the Star Wars movie in IMAX. I thought you and Rhodey went.”

Sam nods, squeezes the corners of the box in his hands. “Yeah, totally worth it.”

Natasha watches him coolly and Sam bites his lip. He knows Nat can’t read minds, but sometimes it seems as though none of the thoughts in his head are safe around her. And he’s never told anyone about how he fucked over Misty all those years ago. Too ashamed and he doesn’t want Natasha to have any more of him to use in their arguments. Provided they have more arguments.

“Maybe Star Wars can be our first date,” Steve says. He nudges Sam’s leg. “If you can stand to watch it again.”

Natasha’s gaze falls like wet wool over Sam – hot, uncomfortable, difficult to get out from under.

“I could,” he says. “I definitely could.”

Before they separate from Nat at Union Station, she pulls Sam aside. “I’m sorry about last night,” she says. “About what I said. I’ve been taught from a very young age to take the kill shot. You don’t do that to your friends, even when you disagree with each other. I’m sorry.”

Sam nods. “I’m sorry, too,” he says. “Who knows? Maybe this whole thing will blow over.”

Natasha’s close-lipped smile does not inspire hope in that scenario. She stands on her tippy toes like a ballerina and kisses Sam’s cheek. “I’ll see you guys,” she says.

 

When Sam and Steve get home, Sam leaves his carry-on suitcase and Riley’s box at the foot of the stairs and goes directly into the kitchen. He pulls out a roll of cookie dough from deep in the freezer and sets it on the counter to thaw. Today feels like a raw cookie dough day. Sam leans against the counter and stares absently at the icy scales on the plastic sheath of cookie dough. His thoughts tangled up with memories of Riley.

Riley used to turn his nose up at cookie dough. He always made cookies from scratch when he stayed with Sam at his mama’s. He didn’t use mixing cups or spoons either. Just added pinches and drifts of salt and flour until it was right. He said he’d teach Sam how to make them someday – Riley’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies defied all understanding with their crisp edges, soft gooey centers, and perfect chip to cookie ratio – but he never had. Extenuating circumstances and all.

It’s still early, only 10 in the morning but it feels like late afternoon, Sunday nap time at least. The sun tracks across the counter slowly until it illuminates the cookie dough with a celestial glow and Sam realizes he’s been staring into space for – he glances at the clock on the stove – twenty minutes. He blinks, shakes himself.

Steve knocks on the counter. “That might be some sort of world record,” he says. “Were you trying to melt the cookie dough with your brain?”

Sam laughs. “I just – I just lost track of it all for a second there.”

“You looked like art,” Steve says. “With the sun and the stillness and—” He stops himself short, then smiles. “I keep forgetting that we’re ‘something’ now and I can say all those things I’ve kept myself from saying before.”

“What were you going to say?” Sam asks. He reaches out for Steve and Steve comes to stand in front of him. His cheeks are flushed like a sunrise.

“I was gonna say, you looked like art with the lighting and – and with your face.” He ducks his head. “Which is a very nice face.”

Sam laughs and watches Steve blush an even deeper pink. “Is that the salacious material you’ve been keeping from me all this time?” He plays his fingers up Steve’s sides like a piano. “Your dirty talk is positively sinful.”

“Here I am giving you a compliment,” Steve grumbles.

“You wanna eat some cookie dough with me and watch _Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?”_

“It’s ten-thirty in the morning, Sam.”

“What? You want a side of eggs with it?”

Steve kisses Sam’s forehead and grabs the cookie dough off the counter. “Something bothering you?” he asks as they walk into the living room together. Sam notices that Steve has taken Sam’s carry-on suitcase upstairs, but left the Riley box. “Haven’t seen you bring out your roll of salmonella in a while.”

“Mama gave me that box over there,” Sam says. He tilts his head toward the stairs as he sat down beside Steve on the sofa. “Just got me thinking about Riley.”

“You okay?” Steve asks. He rubs Sam’s thigh.

“Yeah. You?”

Steve laughs. “Me? Yeah. Why?”

“I’m allowed to check up on you in the absence of stressors, right?”

Steve wrinkles his nose. “You sound like a therapist.”

“Well,” Sam says, putting his hand on top of Steve’s. “It’s my way of saying I like you and care about your moods.”

Steve smiles. “So, when are you free for Star Wars?”

“Tuesday, I think.”

“Can’t.”

“Got a hot date with someone else?” Sam teases.

“No, I’m – I’m going to see Dr. Singh.”

Sam grins. “Good.” He kisses Steve’s shoulder, quick and casual. “I’m proud of you.”

“I knew you’d say that,” Steve sighs.

“What? You don’t want me to be proud of you?”

Steve wrinkles his nose again. “It’s more like – I wish I didn’t need to go. I wish you didn’t need to be proud of me.”

Sam resists the urge to tell Steve he’s being dumb. Instead, he links his arm through Steve’s and leans against his shoulder. Steve smells soft, like clothes just out of the dryer and tear-free shampoo.  “Would it help if I told you I’m _not_ proud of you?”

“Can you do Wednesday? For our date?”

“Nah, I’ve got dinner with Lynn. And Thursday, I’ve got dinner with Rhodey.”

“So, Friday.”

“Friday,” Sam says with a smile.

“Our first date.”

“Date numero uno.”

“Numéro un, as the French say.”

“Are you nervous?” Sam asks. He looks up at Steve and Steve tilts his head.

“Yeah. Isn’t that weird?”

“If it will ease your nerves, I’m totally gonna put out on the first date.”

“Yeah?”

Sam smirks. “Oohhhh yeah.”

“Do you think I can get a sample of what that would be like?”

“What, like a pre-put out? I don’t think that’s standard procedure.”

“Standard, schmandard.”

“Is that your winning argument, Cap? I thought you were more persua—”

Sam and Steve’s phones both buzz at the same time. Sam glances down at his caller id. “It’s SHIELD,” he says.

“Same.”

Sam answers his phone. “Wilson speaking.” He shrugs at Steve, then points to Steve’s cell, which is still ringing in his palm.

On the line, a woman’s voice comes through crisp and official. “This is Agent Hill. Are you alone?”

Sam looks at Steve, who still hasn’t answered his phone, is watching Sam instead. “Sort of,” Sam says.

“If you’re with Steve, go into another room.”

Sam frowns, trying to ignore the sense of impending doom expanding in his stomach. “Can I ask why?” he says, slowly getting to his feet. Steve’s eyes are wide with curiosity, on Sam like a floodlight. He’s still not answering his own phone.

“You can ask,” Agent Hill says tersely, “but I’m not at liberty to say until you’re away from him. And before you leave, tell him to answer his phone. It’s Fury on the line.”

 The swirl of confusion and dread in Sam’s stomach thickens. “Steve,” he says. He pats his pockets for his headphones. “The director would like to speak to you.” (That’s what they call Fury when they’re in places where someone might overhear, i.e. anywhere but SHIELD campus. Officially, Fury’s still dead. All most people know is that SHIELD is back on its feet and has a mysterious leader who speaks through Agent Hill these days.

A wrinkle puckers Steve’s brow. “The director?” he repeats.

Sam shrugs. “Tell him I said hi.” He plugs his headphones into the jack and steps out into his small backyard, a strip of grass and a piteous, little storage shed housing a weed-whacker and a shovel.

“I’m alone, Hill. What’s going on?”

A beat of silence follows his question and Sam doesn’t have to know Agent Hill all that well to know she’s bracing herself for what’s she’s about to say. Which doesn’t bode well for the turn of conversation. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to speak to you and Steve in New York,” she says pointedly.

Sam bites his lip. He considers his next words, ponders their weight. “Nat said she talked with you.”

Another pulse of silence. Maybe Hill is measuring her words too. “We did,” she finally says. “It didn’t go so well. I’m wondering, Sam, if this conversation will have a better outcome.”

“I think it might,” Sam answers. He brushes his finger along the laminate siding of his house. “And for the record, I’m pretty sure Fury’s conversation with Steve will also go well.”

“That’s good to hear,” Hill says. “Because there’s a chance this gets ugly.”

“Yeah.” Sam sighs.

Hill puts her debriefing voice on. “Fury has some people in Congress who recognize what heroes are trying to do, what SHIELD is trying to protect the world from. They gave him a copy of the bill as it stands now.”

“And?” Sam asks. A balmy breeze swirls around the small backyard, rippling the grass blades.

“Jail time for heroes who refuse. A special jail. A very remote jail. And it’s not just a list of names. It’s oversight. They want to tell us when and where to go and how many and which ones of us.”

“Lemme guess,” Sam says, “we don’t help any country where we don’t have an oil well.”

“Fury and I are unsettled about the situation, too.”

“Unsettled?” Sam repeats. Little flutters of adrenaline – panic, dread, and anger prickling with more force than Sam has ever allowed them on this much-avoided subject before – shake his hands slightly, barely a tremble, but he clenches his fist.

“Fucking terrified is what I’d say if this weren’t an official SHIELD conversation,” Hill admits.

Sam laughs. He’s never heard Hill swear before. He likes it. “Yeah,” he says, “fucking terrified about sums it up.”

“There’s more,” Hill adds – because of course there’s more.

“Girding my loins,” Sam says.

“Some diplomats from our allied countries – hell, some diplomats from our non-allied countries support the measure and want to take it international. They’re citing things like Sokovia and Lagos.”

Sam groans.

“And that puts a lot of pressure on us,” Hill continues. “They’ll say we don’t respect other countries’ sovereignty. That we’re international vigilantes with snazzy uniforms. And if enough people say something loud enough...”

“We save people,” Sam protests. “We respond to threats.”

“Well, now they’re saying _we’re_ the threat. Unless they can put a leash on us.”

Sam needs a moment. He needs to sit. This is all a lot heavier than it first seemed. He sinks down to the small slab of concrete that serves as his backyard patio. His legs stretch out in front of him and the grass tickles his ankles. Someone cut the brilliant blue sky out of a magazine and pasted it up there. They spritzed a lovely floral perfume on the air and brought in professional bird songstresses to tweet prettily. It’s a beautiful day for the world to get a little more fucked up, a little less redeemable.

“They’ve got fear on their side,” Hill goes on. “Which is a powerful motivator. We’ve got logic and history on ours.”

“Which has never once prevailed,” Sam says wearily.

“It has not.”

Sam and Hill go quiet.

Sam’s never been much for politics. He joined the army because his dad died and he needed to get the hell out of Harlem for a while. He joined the Avengers because they were fighting the bad guys, the clear and inarguable bad guys. It was an easy decision to make. _There are Nazis among us,_ Steve and Nat had said, and Sam knew without qualm or moral handwringing that those were the kinds of people you punched in the face.

But this is different. This is nuanced and complicated and maybe the other side has some good points, but overall, is trending in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, the American public doesn’t want you to go on TV and explain your position by saying, _Maybe the other side has some valid concerns._ Because that’s saying the other side is right. So, how did one turn the tide of fear against the Avengers back, _without_ pretending like the Avengers were a perfect body of infallible heroes? How to say: Yeah, we might have made some errors and we should be held accountable, but becoming a politicized group of weapons at the beck and call or even in the cage of Congress or – hell – the fucking UN is hardly the answer.

It makes Sam’s brain hurt. Politics always has. His whole life, he’s just voted for the person with a good (or better than the opponent’s) track record on social welfare and minority rights and hoped for the best. Hoping for the best might not be an option right now.

“What do we do next?” he asks.

Hill sighs. “Nothing yet. A response from us at the wrong time could be turned against us quite expertly. Especially now that Senator Ross has joined the pro-registration group.”

“Senator Ross, the guy who hounded Banner?”

“One and the same,” Hill says wearily.

“Well, that should kill the bill right there. He’s an idiot. A blustering, loud idiot.”

Hill laughs. It’s a sad laugh, the laugh of someone who’s seen it all – twice. Sam doesn’t know that much about Hill. She’s from Chicago and roots for the perennially awful Chicago Bears with gusto; she speaks Spanish with an El Salvadorian accent (according to Natasha who would know); she’s very good with a handgun. But she’s young, or at least, not that old. Too young to have a laugh half so sad as she says, “You might be surprised how relatable the American people find a blustering idiot yelling about registration and the weirdos among us.”

“Sounds like you’re counting yourself as one of the weirdos,” Sam says.

“Maybe. I’ve been called worse.”

“Me too.”

“‘ _Fury’s flunky’_ is my favorite. The alliteration, you see.”

Sam chuckles. “Well, apparently, I’m _Steve’s stooge._ At least, per Nat and Tony.”

“Romanov and Stark are a problem.”

“They’re our friends, too. Well, at least Nat is.”

“See if she’ll listen to you, then,” Hill says, sounding wry and annoyed again. “I’d love to make this a non-issue as soon as possible.” Sam can just detect the softening of Hill’s consonants. She sounds like his second-grade teacher, Ms. Guardado, who was so proud of her American accent even though she’d come from Nicaragua when she was already 11. Sam should ask Hill about herself some time. Find out if Nat is right about the El Salvadorian thing.

 “Is that the plan?” he asks instead. “To reason with Nat and Tony? Hope they come around to our side?”

“Informally,” Hill admits. “But officially, there will be hearings to attend. Right now, in front of Congress, but if this gets away from us, maybe in front of the U.N.”

Sam swallows, doesn’t say what he’s thinking which is that the dread and panic have crested, that he’s fully in it. He feels as though he is in a cellar and someone has closed the windows, barred the doors, and stuffed all the cracks with rags. His wings are at the SHIELD facility in his locker. Only he and Fury know the code. They’re secure and he can reach them anytime. He’s not gonna run away from this problem, but his wings are there. If he needs them.

“We’re testing everyone’s temperature right now. People who are officially SHIELD and some powered folks we’ve been keeping an eye on up in New York,” Hill continues. She pauses for a moment, then: “You don’t have to do anything just yet. In fact, please don’t. Fury’s going to ask Rogers not to do anything, which I know will be hard for him. If you have any sway with the Captain, I’d suggest you use it. This is important.”

Sam grimaces. “I don’t want to play babysitter to Steve. That’s not my job.”

“Of course not,” Hill says. “I only meant – not to be overly familiar – but I know the two of you are close and he may listen to you where he wouldn’t listen to Fury. If I’m remembering the Brisbane op from last year right, you’re the one who stopped him from going after Jeffrey Reagan.”

“We didn’t have enough information. Felt reckless.”

“Turned out to be a suicide bomber, right?”

Sam nods, then remembers Hill can’t see him. “Yeah,” he says. “Bomb nearly took us out anyway.” The blaze of the explosion is hot in Sam’s memory, him pulling Sharon to safety with his wings, while Steve crouched behind his shield. That had been an awkward plane ride home, Sam having had to shout at Steve quite a bit to keep him from going after their bad guy. And then calling him an arrogant asshole whose luck was going to run out sooner than he thought. “Do you wanna die, Steve?” he’d asked. “Because your life is hard and a heroic death would be easier? Well, we don’t get easy, so get your head on straight!” And then he and Sharon and Steve had had to sit in the wake of that rant for the 22-hour trip home, their only relief from one another a two-hour layover that wasn’t anything like long enough.

Hopefully, Sam can have a reasoned, level-headed conversation with Steve if it comes to it. He doesn’t like to yell. His dad used to always say, _Don’t raise your voice; improve your argument._ And besides, Sam dated a girl who yelled a lot. It didn’t lead to romantic bliss the way the rom-coms might have moviegoers believe.

He sighs. “I don’t like thinking my every action is Steve-centric,” he says. “Stooge or babysitter. Doesn’t sit right with me. Guess I’m a little sensitive after Natasha…”

“Yeah,” Hill says. “Natasha is very good at her job. Said some pointed things to me, too.”

Sam’s tempted to ask what things. “God, I hope we’re overreacting,” he says instead.

Hill exhales, another of those bone-tired sighs. “Me too, Sam.”

And she’s never called him by his first name, so he knows this is real. And all the cookie dough in the world isn’t going to get this day back on track.

After Sam hangs up with Maria, he sits on the patio for a while longer. Kids’ shrill laughter startle the suburban silence once or twice but it’s peaceful. The sky still achingly blue, the grass still like shards of emerald in a jeweled diorama of the world. Nothing out here is less beautiful because everything else just got so ugly. That’s not the way the world works.

Steve comes out and joins him. Sam doesn’t know how much time has passed.

“Fury says we’ve got to be stealth mode about this,” Steve says without preamble.

Sam nods. “You know the paparazzi are going to bivouac on our lawn, right?”

Steve sighs. He slides his arm around Sam’s waist and rests his face on Sam’s chest. Sam rubs his cheek on the soft fuzz of Steve’s hair.

“Nat and Tony are on the wrong side of this,” Steve says after a few moments silence, of healing.

“The _other_ side of this,” Sam corrects gently. “We’d be stupid not to acknowledge they’ve got some kind of point.”

Steve grunts. “I know it’s complex and nuanced and there are shades of gray, but can it just be black and white for a second? Can I just be annoyed that Nat’s not with us? And that Tony’s, predictably, against us?”

Sam smiles. He and Steve have that in common. Wanting the obvious bad guy. The Rumlows and Red Skulls and Ultrons. Not the Buckys or Tonys or Nats. And whoever else ended up on the other side of this. “Just for now. Just in this moment,” he says. “Then we have to be adults. Figure this thing out without punching our friends and teammates.”

Steve’s rubbing soothing circles on Sam’s back, comforting while being comforted.

“I gotta confess, though,” Sam says. “I’ve known how Natasha felt for about a week. It’s what we argued about last night.”

“Is that why you had sex with me last night? To distract me?”

“Nah,” Sam laughs. “I had sex with you because I _like_ having sex with you.”

Steve snorts. “You tried to change Nat’s mind, then?”

Sam nods. “She got under my skin though. Made me mad. You can’t win in an argument with her. You can escape, but that’s not the same as winning.”

“Hmm,” Steve says. He rubs his cheek over Sam’s shirt, like he likes the softness of it, like a cat bumping up against its owner to save _love me; I love you._ “Fury said something to me once,” Steve murmurs, “and it’s stuck with me all this time. He said I was around to handle the problems that required a fight and he was there to point me at the problem. And then Nat’s there to trick the problem, Tony out-thinks it. (Or creates it. My words, not Fury’s). Banner smashes it. Rhodey negotiates with it. Fury said you were an interesting case though.”

“How’s that?” Sam asks.

Steve sits up so he and Sam are eye to eye. “He said you don’t look at the problem. You look at the people. And you rescue them.” He smiles and it’s as warm as a hug.

“I like that,” Sam murmurs. “Rescuing people.”

“Fury says we’re gonna win this by winning the people, by saving them from their own ignorance and fear. Call it intuition, call it a gut feeling – I don’t know. But I think you’re gonna have a big role in how this plays out. I know my name – Captain America – it’s a lot, you know. It’s politicized. It’s enmeshed with American policy. And my personality – I do tend to punch my way out of problems. But you, Sam. You – I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, but I’m gonna follow your lead on this, if that’s okay. If you’re comfortable with that.”

“My lead?” Sam repeats, surprised.

Steve nods. He ducks his head, looks up at Sam through the thick fringe of his lashes. “Tell me what to do,” he says. “Tell me what to do, Sam.” 

“Kiss me.” Sam doesn’t expect to say it. They’re talking about the fate of the Avengers and maybe the fate of justice in the world. But the words are out of his mouth before he can think them through and Steve does. He kisses Sam, softly, tenderly.

Sam closes his eyes and presses his forehead to Steve’s, says a silent benediction for the peace that is gone. He kisses Steve back, pouring into it all the comfort and hope and resolve he has to give and Steve doing the same for him. A kiss to say, “We fight.” A kiss to say, “This will be okay.”

When Sam and Steve pull apart, Sam puts his hand in the center of Steve’s chest, feels the steady heartbeat against his palm. “You’re going to write one of your impassioned speeches, the ones you pretend you come up with on the spot.” (Steve makes a face.) “Then we’re going to listen to the pro-reg people. We’re going to sift through the fear and hysteria and political shit and really understand what they’re saying. And you’re gonna edit your totally impromptu speech accordingly. We’ll go to the hearings and you’ll be eloquent and convincing and a voice of reason that cuts through the noise. And they’ll listen to you because you’re so pretty. (And a white guy.)” Sam pushes himself to his feet and offers a hand to Steve. “In the meantime, we’re going to go kill that cookie dough. We missed _Fresh Prince_ so we’re gonna pop in _Pacific Rim_ instead. We’re going to go on a fantastic date Friday. You’re really gonna blow me away with all the romantic details and trimmings and fuss. We’re going to stay calm.” He kisses Steve again and smiles. “We’re gonna trust Fury and we’re gonna be okay.”

“Okay,” Steve says like they’ve just solved everything. “But before the cookie dough…” He fingers the hem of Sam’s shirt and Sam raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah?” he asks

Steve nods. He walks Sam back through the door into the living room and then turns them around and presses Sam against the wall. Steve kisses him, a lot less gently than before, a kiss laced with adrenaline needing somewhere to go. All of Sam and Steve’s encounters up ‘til now have been indulgent and sweet, adoring and enthusiastic but not out of control. This kiss is new, different; this kiss has a third-rail current. Steve lifts Sam off his feet and cups his ass. (Sam is _still_ taken by surprise at being the manhandled one in this relationship.) He mouths at Sam’s collarbone and throat.

“I like your plan, though,” he says. “It’s a very good plan. S’why you’re in charge.”

“Am I?” Sam laughs, gesturing with his hands at the way Steve has him pressed up against a wall, his feet dangling.

“Well,” Steve demurs prettily. “Not this part. I quite like being in charge of this part.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUCH a delay in updating. I honestly wasn't even gonna come back to this but I got some lovely commenters both here and on Tumblr insisting that I do, and since I love your praise and adoration, here we are. And I have a pretty clear vision of where this fic is going, so yes there will be more. No promises on an update schedule because I don't wanna get caught in a lie. :D


	6. Just An Old Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Misty calls Sam, and Steve and Sam get a nasty surprise.

“I’m gonna ask you something and you can’t flip out,” Lynn says as she slides into her chair fifteen minutes late for dinner with Sam. She tosses her clutch bag on the table and cracks her knuckles.

“Hi,” Sam says. He nods at the glasses of wine that are swaying perilously on the table. “I ordered the house white.”

Lynn grimaces, little scrunch lines appearing along the bridge of her long, straight nose. “Is this my punishment for being late?” she asks. “I went home to change so you wouldn’t have to look at me in the same dreadful shit I wear to work.” She flaps her hands at her top – a creamy white sleeveless blouse with a repeating pattern of cartoonish birds. She has also pulled her long black hair up into a ponytail that accentuates her youthful face. Lynn is pushing 45 but could easily pass for thirty if she weren’t so damn proud of being in her forties.

“I’m forty-three years old,” she likes to proclaim with absolutely no provocation and then the less-well-preserved people flock to her, demanding to know her Asian secrets. She loves to make wild shit up. “Eat the heart of an artichoke on the full moon,” she’ll say very seriously or “I only wash my face with whole milk from a free-range cow whose grandcow sires have never been within 100 yards of an antibiotic.” When Sam once asked her in all seriousness what her skincare routine was, because _damn_ , she laughed and said, “My book, _Orientalism is Racist_ will be out soon, including a whole three chapters on skincare.”

“You look very nice,” Sam acknowledges now. He doesn’t know shit about make-up, but he thinks she may have even bothered to put on some blush and some of that shimmery stuff girls like to wear on their cheekbones and noses. 

“Thanks,” Lynn says dismissively. “You too. Which is my point.”

“Point?” Sam repeats. He grabs his wine glass. He has a feeling he’s gonna need liquid fortification.

“You’re glowing,” Lynn accuses. “And the very last time I said that to you, you had just started a whirlwind sexcapade with, hmmm, what was her name? Jenny? Janie?”

“Jamie.”

“The very one.” Lynn sips her wine, then grimaces. “You couldn’t have asked for the red, at least?”

“You were 15 minutes late, Lynn. I can order what I like when I have to sit at a two-person table by myself for 15 minutes while everyone in the joint gives me pity eyes.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Lynn says. “Anyway, who’s the lucky human? And please, please spare no detail.”

Sam laughs. “Unfortunately for you, the details are private.”

“What am I?” Lynn demands, her voice laced with mock outrage. “Fucking paparazzi or your friend? And what’s this word ‘private’ all about? You know English isn’t my first language.”

Sam rolls his eyes. Lynn pulls the ‘English isn’t my first language’ card whenever it suits her and it usually suits her when she’s investigating Sam’s love life.

“How’s Erica?” he asks, moving the conversation elsewhere.

“Losing her shit,” Lynn says. She sits back in her chair and sulks. “She’s trying to get her mom back in the States and it’s become a whole thing.”

“What happened?”

Lynn rolls her eyes. “She lost her passport going to visit some of the family in Mexico, so now they’re not letting her back into the country. Erica has to find all the paperwork in her mom’s house – and Teresa is a hoarder; like, an intervention-needed hoarder. Plus, Erica got super pissed at me because I’m not as up-in-arms about this as she would like. And it’s like, ‘First of all, your mom is always good for at least three _Emergencies_ ™ a month. And like, Erica, you’re a lawyer. You’ll figure it out.’”

“She’s a divorce attorney,” Sam points out.

“Yeah, but I have total faith in her, which apparently isn’t the reaction your wife wants when her mother is trapped in Mexico.”

“Lynn, sometimes people just want you to freak out with them, so they don’t feel like they’re overreacting.”

Lynn sighs. “You’re so good at relationship stuff. Why are you perennially single?”

“I’m busy,” Sam says. He glances around for their waitress who hasn’t come by since she set down the wine 10 minutes ago.

“Busy having glowy sex with someone. You have not distracted me, Samuel.” Lynn raises a finger in the air and like magic, the server appears at their table, as though conjured. Lynn smiles smugly at Sam as she hands the waitress the glass of white wine. “Can I have the Merlot instead?” she asks. She tilts her head and smooths her ponytail through her fingers. The server smiles.

“Of course. Did the gentleman order it by mistake? We won’t charge you if it’s not what you wanted.”

Sam frowns, 100% positive that that isn’t restaurant policy. He kicks Lynn under the table as she explains to the server about how Sam is her assistant and she’s trying to teach him some high culture things, but he’s almost pathologically stupid about what qualifies as a good wine. The server and Lynn both give Sam pitying glances that make his ears warm with embarrassment.

The moment the server is out of earshot, Sam says, “I don’t know why I put up with you, but it’s not your sense of humor. And stop flirting with our waitress.”

Lynn grins. “That only looked like flirting because you’re so far out of the game.”

“You’re married. There should be no game.”

“I wasn’t flirting, you nibnob. I’m pretty, our waitress is pretty, and we were talking. And to your prurient, male mind, that is an inherently sexual act, when in fact—”

“Okay,” Sam says, putting up his hands in surrender. “You weren’t flirting.”

“Thank you.” Lynn picks up her menu. “Will you judge me if I get a salad? I had, like, eighteen tacos at lunch. I met with Julio.”

Sam frowns. “Vargas? How’d you manage that?” Julio, an army vet just off three tours in Afghanistan, has been to Sam’s group a couple times, but he’s extremely closed off and Sam hasn’t been able to really make any headway with him. Sam isn’t sure if it’s the language barrier or if the guy is really just that gone (despite showing up to group, which is a sign of progress in and of itself).

Lynn shrugs. “We didn’t talk much; just stuffed our faces, but he seemed relaxed. Way more relaxed than he does at the VA. Maybe try having group off campus. Supposed to be nice next week. That might help.”

Sam nods. “Thanks. I’ll take it under advisement.”

“Always happy to help. Now,” Lynn says, lowering her menu to pierce Sam with her black stare – the effect somewhat ruined because she has such a sweet face; she could never pull off the hard-boiled detective vibe she’s clearly going for here, “who are you banging? Or…” She raises an eyebrow, “who’s banging you?”

Mercifully, Sam’s phone chirps at that exact moment. He pulls it out of his back pocket and glances at the caller ID. A New York number he doesn’t recognize. Could be something with his mama or sister. “I gotta take this,” he mutters, getting up from the table.

“Sure you do,” Lynn teases, but when she notices Sam’s worried face, she grabs his wrist. “Peace, baby,” she says.  

Sam smiles his thanks. That’s their thing. If one of them is having a bad time, they say ‘peace, baby’ like a blessing, like a prayer.

“Sam Wilson speaking,” Sam answers, weaving between the closely-packed tables, which have formed an Expert Level labyrinth to the front door.

“Sammy,” a warm, female voice says. A voice a familiar as Sam’s own, but one he hasn’t heard in almost five years, had never really expected to hear again. “Is it too cheesy to say I’ve missed you?” she asks. There is a teasing smile woven into her words.

“Misty?” Sam asks, the speaking centers of his brain playing a desperate game of catch-up with his hind brain who knows this is Misty, who would never have to ask. He pushes out of the restaurant onto the sidewalk, where the waning sunlight has given way to lavender and slate blue shadows and the air is cool. A good thing because the blood has risen high and hot under Sam’s skin.

“You deleted my number?” Misty asks, still teasing, still warm.

“No,” Sam says. He sinks on to the bench outside the restaurant window. “I would nev—I’ve had a few new phones since…. I put something out on Facebook. Getting everybody back in my phone.”

“Must have missed the status update,” Misty says. “Your mama told me you had the same number. Called around the other day to track you down.” She said this without self-consciousness or shame. She talked like a police officer, matter-of-fact, sure of her decisions and authority.

“I’m actually at dinner with a friend,” Sam mentions, fighting against all the instincts that tell him to apologize profusely for how things ended with them, to interrogate her about her life, a life he never inquired about after he left Harlem because he was too scared to face his own fuck-ups there related.

“One of the Avengers?” Misty asks wryly. It’s the same tone his brother uses talking about the Avengers, like he doesn’t quite take the whole endeavor seriously, or else like he’s doesn’t really believe Sam is part of the group, but he’ll patronize him anyway.

“No,” Sam says, “it’s – ah – a friend, a work friend. I work at the VA now. Here in D.C.”

A gap of silence follows across the phone line before Misty says, “Good. That’s good.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “So maybe we can talk later tonight. If you’re free. If you want to. 10:00? East Coast time. Are you still on the East Coast.”

“I haven’t left Harlem,” Misty says and if the statement is heavy with meaning, Sam can tell Misty doesn’t want it to be, that she’s trying to do light and breezy. She is not a light and breezy person naturally, though. She is neurotic, a worrier, an obsesser, has a temper, but she wears humor like armor.

“Okay,” Sam says, “so is ten good for you.”

“I don’t know, Sam, I keep decent hours now.”

Sam laughs. “You? Cured night owl?”

“Danny’s teaching me meditation,” she says. “To help reset my circadian chakras or something.”

“Danny your…” Sam says without thinking, then pauses.

“You’ve got your dinner,” Misty says breezily. “Don’t wanna keep them waiting. Ten will be fine.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah. Bye, Misty.”

“Bye, Sam.”

When Sam returns to the table, Lynn watches him intently. “Something bad?” she asks.

Sam shakes his head. He smiles. “No, it was just an old friend.”

 

When Sam arrives at home, Steve isn’t around. It’s 9:43 and Sam is jittery with nerves. What does Misty want? To reconnect? To break some news about a mutual friend? To say that one last thing she hadn’t said when they broke up?

Sam pours himself a glass of water and leans on the counter, watching his cell phone. Is he supposed to call her? Or she him? They hadn’t been particularly clear on that point. And is it too desperate, too eager to call at precisely 10:00 or should he wait until 10:05?

Misty used to always say very lovingly, “Be chill, bitch,” if Sam told her he loved her, or if he was ever too enthusiastic about giving her a Valentine’s Day gift or doing something nice for her. Sometimes when he’d open the door for her or pulled out her chair, she’d turn, smile, and say, “You are just way too into me.” It was her way of saying ‘Thank you and I love you.” It took a while to understand Misty’s language, which always seemed to hold you at a distance, to say, ‘You can come this close, but no closer.’ But if you saw the smiles tucked into the words, the love that radiated from her actions, you’d know that what you had was real. Dating Misty had made Sam a more sensitive, attentive person. To read her moods and feelings through all the wryness, sarcasm, and jokes, was to read the faint etchings on an unilluminated cave wall. 

Sam sips his water and the ice clinks against his teeth. His phone beeps and he reaches for it, but it’s just Rhodey sending him a picture of him and Monica at a New Orleans political function gala. Sam is surprised they’re taking a selfie together; they don’t really get along that well. Rhodey says she’s too direct; and Monica can’t stand Tony, so she’s always giving Rhodey grief for being friends with him. Sam thinks they’d probably get along great if they took even half a second to talk about something other than Tony. But that’s neither here nor there.

Sam cracks his knuckles. He goes into the living room and fiddles with the blinds. He adjusts the magazines on the coffee table. Steve has a mug on the side table with a small ring of coffee within its depths. Where is Steve anyway? Usually he’s home in the evenings, unless he has a mission. Sam glances around to see if Steve left a note somewhere. The guy knows all about phones and text messages, but still leaves handwritten notes around and about. Sometimes with little drawings in the corner, still life sketches of random items in the room. Nothing, though.

Sam’s phone rings and he runs into the kitchen. He skids across the tile and swipes his device. It clatters into the sink, among the dirty dishes, still bleating. Sam snatches it up.

“Hello. Hi. Hey. Sorry.”

Misty laughs. “Sammy, what in the world is going on over there?”

“I – uh – I just got into my house. Your call surprised me.”

“The call we scheduled three and half hours ago?”

Sam chuckles. “Yeah. Let’s start over. Hi.”

“Hey.” Her voice is cozy, like a hug.

“How are you?”

“I’m good. It’s raining here. Warm rain.”

“Your favorite.”

“Yeah.”

Sam quickly wipes the damp screen of his phone on his pants leg. “So, Misty.” He plays with the sink tap, turning the water on and off.

“Why’d I call you after so long?” she asks.

“You always did finish my sentences.” Sam tugs at the hem of his shirt self-consciously.

“Oh Sammy,” Misty says gently. “Sit down and relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

“I can hear your whole brain doing the May Day call, babe.”

Sam wipes his face with his hand. “Yeah, maybe.”

“One of my girls said she saw you in Harlem. Called your name too, but you didn’t hear.” Misty pauses, as if giving Sam a chance to explain himself. She lets out an amused huff. “You were with some blond guy. She thought it was your boy Riley.”

Sam coughs. “Riley wasn’t ‘my boy.’ And – uh.” Sam cleared his throat again. “He died.”

“Oh, baby,” Misty murmurs, “I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Here I was,” Misty says slowly, “thinking you left Harlem … so you wouldn’t have to run into me.”

“Misty—”

“We can admit we didn’t end well,” she says. “It was hard for me to compete with the man you saw every day, risked your life with. I just made the mistake of taking it personal.”

“Riley and I never—”

“I know, Sam. And look, I’m not mature enough to say I wish you two could’ve been something after we broke up, but I’m sorry he died.”

Sam closes his eyes.

“And I’m sorry,” Misty goes on, “for throwing that blender at you.”

Sam frowns, then remembers what’s she’s talking about. “It was a food processor,” he corrects. “And I assumed you missed on purpose.”

“Nope,” Misty laughs. “Lost my temper. I’m glad _now_ I didn’t hit you with it. I was less glad then. Would you believe me if I told you I’ve got my temper under control these days?”

“You weren’t so bad,” Sam says, maybe eliding the truth a little. “Slow to anger, but maybe a bit fiery once you got there.”

“The trick is not to get there,” Misty says. “I know a guy. Super philosophical. Says that anger serves no purpose. Drives me up a wall with his kumbaya bullshit sometimes, but I’m starting to subscribe to the message.”

“Does utilitarianism have a place in a discussion about emotions?” Sam asks.

“Oh,” Misty laughs. “Danny would love you.”

“Is Danny…?” Sam asks again.

“Uh, he’s…something.” Misty clears her throat. “Not my type at all, of course, and yet…”

“I’m happy for you, baby girl.”

“Mmm, no one’s called me ‘baby girl’ in years.

“Sorry.”

“No, no. I like it. I missed it. Bet no one calls you Sammy anymore either.”

“Only you.” Sam pushes himself up onto the counter and they’re both quiet for a few minutes. It’s an easy silence, even for an over-the-phone pause and Sam enjoys listening to her quiet exhalations, imagining her sitting on her fire escape looking out at the warm rain in New York. Her twist-out will be puffing up from the humidity and the orange glow of the street lights will turn her brown skin copper. She will look as beautiful as she did five years ago, hardly a change on her face.

“The guy Audra saw you with?” Misty says after a while. “Was that the Captain himself?”

Sam laughs. “Yeah. I mean, I call him Steve. But yeah.”

“So, I guess you do have a type,” Misty murmurs.

“I’m—”

 “Calm down, Sammy. I’m teasing you. Tall, broad, and blond is not a bad type to have.”

“You were my type, too,” Sam insists. For some reason, he needs her to know that. That he really did love her, that she wasn’t a placeholder for someone else….

“Like you said,” she says. “It was a long time ago.”

They’re quiet again for a moment, this time less peacefully. “So, what have you been up to?” Sam asks. “Last I heard you got a medal of valor. Didn’t hear what for.”

“Police department thought it’d make me feel better about losing my arm.”

Sam coughs. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Bomb,” Misty says dismissively. “Blew my arm off. Got an anonymous donation for a pretty cool prosthetic though. Now that the ‘why God? why me?’ phase is over and done with, it’s all good.”

Sam doesn’t know what to say. He bites his lip.

“You don’t have to counsel me through this, Sammy. I’m fine.”

“I’m sure you are,” he says. “It’s just – that’s a lot to happen to a person. Wow.”

Misty laughs again. “And now I’m a hero. Like you. Well, not like you.” She sounds wry again. “The Avengers. The Falcon. I’m still just Misty.”

“Back up, baby girl. You lost your arm, got a prosthetic, and now you fight crime?” Sam fumbles for his glass of water.

“That about sums it up. Street shit. I have a detective agency, actually.”

“An _agency_.”

“Of two. Me and my girl Colleen.”

“She got a prosthetic, too? That your gimmick?”

Misty laughs. “Nah, she’s good with a sword.”

“Like Michonne?”

“Something like that.”

“How do you do it? With the missing arm.”

“Oh, the prosthetic has got all the tricks. Turns out the bomb that took off my arm was sold by Stark Industries and Stark was a little … shall we say … embarrassed that his weapons got used in a terror attack and blew off the arm of one of New York’s Finest. Wanted to do some good.”

“He tell you all that?” Sam asks.

“Nope. But I’m smart. Did some digging. Don’t know if it counts as accountability being an anonymous donation, but I’m not complaining. I got a bionic arm out of the whole thing.”

“Hm,” Sam says. “That’s certainly looking on the bright side.”

“Well, it’s kind of why I called. You’re in D.C. You’re a hero. This whole registration thing is gaining speed. I know I’m not with the Avengers, but if they come for you guys, it’s only a matter of time before they come for street-level types. For people who’d really rather stay in the shadows.”

“So, you’re against it, too?”

“Of course. Who’d be for it except a bunch of scared old bags in Congress.”

Sam purses his lip. “Oh, you’d be surprised. Some people see this whole thing as a means of accountability.”

“We’re accountable to all the people we save,” Misty snaps.

“Baby girl, I’m on your side.”

“Oh yeah, sorry. I’m just really … annoyed. It’s selfish, really. I just don’t need a lot of sentiment turning heroes into bad guys. We don’t get hired when people are afraid of us. And then I don’t pay the bills. Not to be mercenary about all the heroics.”

“We’re working on it,” Sam assures her. “And Fu—people in high places probably have a plan.”

“Are those people gonna share? Because the idea of ‘people in high places’ is probably why politicians don’t wanna fuck with the likes of us anymore.”

Sam tilts his head. “You’re not wrong.”

Steve’s key jingles in the lock of the front door and Sam glances at his watch. He’s about to tell Misty he has to go when Steve ducks through the door and gives a small wave before making for the stairs in a big hurry, like he doesn’t necessarily want to talk to Sam. Sam bites his lip and realizes he’s not listening to Misty tell him some story about one of her recent jobs.

“Wait a second,” he says. “Start over. This woman wanted you to do what with her dead brother?”

Sam and Misty talk for hours, until Sam’s mouth is dry and his head nods on his chest.

“Baby girl, I have work in the morning,” he says, rubbing his eyes.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “Me too.”

“So, I gotta go.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I miss you, Misty.”

“Yeah.” She laughs. “Me too. At you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Misty, you’re making this hard. We’re gonna talk again.”

“Are we?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I let a lot of bullshit get in the way these last few years. I’m sorry. I’ve been sorry for a long time.”

“Would it help if I told you I forgive you?”

Sam smiles. His eyes are bleary. The clock on the stove reads 11:54. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Well, then call me again some time and I’ll tell you.” Misty laughs again and the call goes dead.

Sam adds her to his contacts, types in her name, erases it. Types in Baby Girl.

Steve is curled up on his side when Sam goes to his bedroom to say goodnight. They still don’t usually stay the night in each other’s rooms and the way Steve came in, Sam’s sure he wants to be alone.

“Hey, Steve,” he says, rapping on the door. “Haven’t seen you all day.”

Steve smiles, uncurls slightly. “I had to get out of D.C. for a bit.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Chesapeake Bay. Sat by the water.”

“You good?”

Steve nods, but his blue eyes glitter suspiciously. “When I went running this morning, I passed a crowd of protestors.”

Sam nods, ignoring the sharp clench of muscle in his stomach. He knows he doesn’t want to ask the thing he’s about to ask. He just wants to shower and smile about his lovely conversation with Misty, to think over the possibilities of their renewed friendship. And yet. “What were they protesting?” he asks.

Steve bits his bottom lip and his long lashes tremble. “Me.”

 

Sam wakes up with Steve pressed against him. Sam was asleep on his stomach, so Steve has sorta slung himself across Sam’s back. His body heat is incredible, like a furnace taken human form. Sam’s about to say something like, ‘Scoot over’ or ‘Is this hell?’ when Steve kisses his shoulder, his neck, then the slope of his spine, making detours to the shoulder blades. He cups Sam’s ass and squeezes, and Sam grunts.

“So, you’re awake,” Steve says. Sam can hear the just-shrugged-off sleep in his voice and the gladness. Steve is a medical marvel that way, can wake up happy and playful and horny. Well, the horny part Sam understands.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“I think,” Steve murmurs, “I want to fuck you before you go to work.”

Sam laughs, always a little startled to have Steve’s corn-fed, good ole boy image give way to a sexually confident, not-even-a-little-bit-repressed guy who says exactly what he wants and how. Too bad that doesn’t extend to his emotional life so much. Last night after he told Sam about the protest against in him (in very newsreel objective statements), Sam asked what he was feeling and Steve shrugged and said, “You should sleep in here tonight. I miss you.” No acknowledgement of the pain he was experiencing. And Sam was too tired to tease it out of him. Besides that wasn’t really his job. So, he’d undressed and got into bed with Sam and they’d fallen asleep inside of five minutes.

“Hmm,” Sam says now. He yawns into his pillow as Steve drags his fingernails lightly across the sensitive skin at the small of Sam’s back. Goosebumps prickle his arms from the light touch. “I think I very much like the sound of that,” he says. “Except…”

“Except?” Steve pauses in his ministrations, his fingertips just skimming the waist of Sam’s boxers.

“Except it’s 7:10 and I slept through my go-running alarm.”

“I turned it off,” Steve admits. “You haven’t been sleeping well.”

“This you taking care of me?” Sam asks.

“You stay up watching the news, then you wake up early to go running, then you go to the VA, then you talk to Maria about possible ops, then you stay up watching the news. You need your rest. Especially after last night. You were on the phone ‘til midnight.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, touched that Steve has paid this much attention to his schedule. It’s a silly thing to be so warmed by, and yet. Sam yawns again. “An old friend called.”

Steve flinches, his _‘I’ve thought an unpleasant thought’_ stillness but tries to hide it by going back to tracing swirls into Sam’s skin.

“What?” Sam asks.

Steve sighs. “Old friends. Just made me think of…”

“Bucky.”

“Yeah.”

“You want to go look for him.” Not even a question. Just a statement of fact. He can feel the yearning in Steve like a heartbeat, pulsing, throbbing.

“Like I said,” Steve says, “I want to make sweet, sweet love to you.”

Conversation over. Sam’s not going to push. He sits up. “Let me wash the sleep out of my eyes and then you can. Although if I recall, you said ‘fuck’ originally. And I’m holding you to that. None of this ‘sweet, sweet love-making’ nonsense.” He looks over his shoulder and smiles at Steve, who looks tousled and dreamy. Steve pats Sam’s hip.

Sam comes back to Steve’s bedroom after a quick detour to his own bathroom for a face wash and brushing his teeth. He’s tempted to shower, but Steve will just get him sweaty all over again.

“Ravish me,” he says dramatically, striking a pose at Steve’s door. The blue and white light of the TV illuminates the morning twilight of the room. Steve turns his head toward Sam and the hard line of his jaw is stark, his eyes dark and intense. “What is it?” Sam asks. The mood is suddenly dense and ugly.

He looks at the TV.

Tony. On the Today Show. With a running script at the bottom of the screen: Iron Man Weighs In on Registration Act: And He’s All For It.

Sam exhales and drops his silly pose.

“Fuck me,” he whispers. And it’s not the nice kind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a job now, which is to blame for the total lack of an update, but got a snow day to bang this out even though I'm lazy and kept running away from writing to do nothing for long stretches of time. Anywho, here's a new chapter. Sort of talk heavy. Sucks if you're not into that sort of thing. Things definitely pick up in the next chapter.   
> Action. Adventure. Virginia. Mysteries. (BUCKY?) Crashing on your couch for a week because TECHNICALLY I'M HOMELESS. (TV reference; not a cry for help.)


	7. It Can Wait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's Today Show appearance will have consequences, there's no doubt, but a new wrinkle is setting up a lot more problems than just the possibility of a Registration Act.

 “Steve.”

“I’m going to murder him.”

“We talked about this.”

“I don’t – fuck, Sam! He couldn’t wait to go on national television and give his fucking opinion. He didn’t even talk to me – to us – about it.”

Sam shrugs. “Color me shocked that Tony did something without consulting the rest of the team.” Sam fiddles with the drawstring of his pajama pants and watches Steve seethe dramatically. If this were a cartoon, he would have smoke billowing out of his ears. “Let’s take a deep breath?” Sam suggests when it doesn’t seem like Steve is going to come out of this rage on his own. “You’re getting those weird splotches on your chest. Like you’re having an allergic reaction.”

“I’m allergic to Tony,” Steve mutters darkly.

“You’re a two-year-old,” Sam laughs, glad that he _can_ laugh through the stress pressing against his chest like some sort of odd torture device.

Steve frowns. “What are the chances Tony will publicly recant everything he just said?”

“Zero,” Sam says without hesitation. He ties his drawstrings into a floppy bow. “Although, to be fair, we aren’t actually listening to what he’s saying.”

“I can’t right now.” Steve fumbles for the remote control and turns off the TV. “It will be on the YouTube later, right?”

“They’re gonna run this interview until every person with an internet connection or cable box sees it,” Sam says. He crosses the carpeted floor and climbs back into bed. Steve curls up on his side near Sam’s knees and Sam pats his head. “There are going to be fifteen think pieces within the hour. Which it wouldn’t hurt for you to read, by the way, so all your pretty little speeches _against_ the registration act will sound balanced, reasoned, like you’ve actually listened to anything the pro-reg crowd has to say.”

Steve snorts and rubs his face against Sam’s thigh like a cat. (Steve is a lot more physically affectionate than Sam would have guessed. They’ve been friends for plenty long enough for Sam to have noticed something like this, and yet, until they “declared themselves,” Steve hadn’t really gone in for hugs or sitting particularly close to Sam or really any sort of casual contact. The only times they’d really touched previously was during missions, when Sam would have to haul Steve’s ass out of a combat zone or off a ledge. Maybe Steve’s been holding back this whole time, exhibiting some of that super soldier control. Whatever it is, Sam likes the change, the attention. The way Steve will just touch his hip or kiss his shoulder in passing. It feels like an affirmation of everything they mean to each other.)

Steve continues to rub his face against Sam’s thigh as he complains: “It’s not fair. I have to listen to Tony’s side of it, but he’s not going to listen to mine. He’s gonna play the public like he always does. ‘Look at me, I’m Iron Man. With the cool gadgets. And all the action figures. Which means I’m right about everything.’” Steve scowls some more and pokes Sam’s leg. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed that everyone likes him more than me. They think I’m a square. An oversized Boy Scout.” Steve peers up at Sam, looking particularly tragic. Sam would think it’s funny if Steve weren’t actually deeply insecure about this. And if the outcome of the public’s preference for Steve or Tony weren’t actually going to have an effect on public policy. ( _God, our country is broken_ , Sam thinks, not for the first time.)

“Babe, you’re whining,” he chastises gently. He bends over and kisses the crown of Steve’s head. The soft, blond hairs tickle his nose. “And toy sales are not an indication of popularity. Tony’s suit has the bells and whistles kids like. Trust me, regular thinking adults aren’t nearly as charmed by Tony’s antics. Besides, since he’s retired (again), he’s not even an acting Avenger. How much weight does his opinion really carry?”

“The Today Show invited _him_ on TV,” Steve points out.

“True, but Tony has sad, little minions whose only job is to keep him relevant and his stock portfolio strong. _We’re_ just the poor guys saving everyone’s asses day in and day out.” Sam shrugs. “Besides, if worst comes to worst, you could just pull the Sokovia card. _We_ didn’t create those bots; Tony did. And we didn’t fight Banner and decimate a city. Tony did. Honestly, without Tony on the team, we look downright responsible.”

Steve nods his head in agreement a little too vigorously and Sam has to add, “That’s me being petty, babe. You should not under any circumstances sling mud at Tony to prove your point. You’ll look like an asshole _._ ”

Steve heaves out a noisy exhalation and slides his hand along Sam’s lap, as though looking for something he’s lost. “I was planning on having such a lovely morning,” he says sadly.

Sam thinks of twenty minutes ago when he was about to have sex. “Tell me about it.” He glances at the alarm clock on the night table. “And now I have to get ready for work.”

“Call in sick,” Steve suggests. He plucks at the fabric of Sam’s pajama bottoms.

Sam bats at Steve’s hand as the corners of his mouth jump. “Why are you always trying to get me to desert my responsibilities?”

“Because I like you and I want you around.” Steve smiles guilelessly.

“You just want to complain about Tony. I swear, you two should just whip your dicks out and see whose is bigger. It would take less time.”

“This is about the Registration Act,” Steve insists.

“I know,” Sam acknowledges. He swings his legs over the side of the bed regrettably. He really would love to call in sick and spend the day with Steve, preferably not talking about Tony. “But with you two, it always gets real immature real fast. And you said you’d defer to me on this, but how long are you going to be able to keep that up if Tony irritates you even a little bit.”

“You don’t think I can follow your lead?” Steve asks.

 “When it comes to Tony?” Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. I _hope_ you can. But if you two turn this into a pissing contest, the registration act will be the least of our problems.”

“You’re borrowing tomorrow’s trouble, Sam.”

“Steve,” Sam says earnestly, “the sooner you admit that you and Tony turn everything into a shoving match, the sooner you can focus on the real problem. You two have some weird vibes; you always have. And what’s at stake with this law is too big for your ego to get in the way.”

Wounded surprise illuminates Steve’s eyes. “I don’t have an ego,” he protests.

Sam snorts and tries to turn it into a cough when he notices Steve’s eyes widen with outrage. “I mean, you kinda do,” he says gently. “Sure, you call the grocer ‘ma’am’ and you don’t demand people kiss your ring as they pass, but…” He trails off, hoping Steve will see the point, but Steve’s nonplussed expression says otherwise.

“Baby,” Sam says. He cups Steve’s shoulder. “You’re a white male celebrity with the strength of ten men, you’re a national icon and hero with statues and museums in your honor all over the country, and you’ve got that whole ‘truth, justice, and the American way’ Superman thing going on. You’ve got an ego.” He smiles at Steve to soften the judgment. “It’s cool, though. Beyoncé’s got a whole song about it. If I could carry a tune, I’d sing it for you.” He kisses Steve’s nose. “Maybe later when we pick up where we left off.”

Sam can tell Steve wants to push the point about his ego, but he’s also being distracted by Sam’s promise of sex later. “Is it that kind of song?” he asks. He holds Sam’s arm to keep him from leaving to go get dressed. His warm hands slide up and down Sam’s bicep, over his chest, down to the waist of his pants. Sam grabs Steve’s wrists.

“It's that kind of song,” he affirms. “But you'll have to wait until later.”

Steve sighs despondently and falls back on the mattress. His eyes are closed as he asks the universe: “Why, oh, why did I check the news?”

 

 

Sam _can’t_ avoid the news at work. The TVs in the waiting room are all turned to CNN and MSNBC with clips of Tony’s interview playing on one or the other TV at any given moment. Sam knows he’ll have to watch the interview sooner rather than later, but he’s got plenty on his plate without listening to Tony make his life harder on national television.

For starters, Sam has a tremendous backlog of paperwork that Meredith has been hounding him about for weeks (has even got Lynn on him a few times, which is drastic measures indeed), and he’s doing family counseling with one of his vets this afternoon, Tori -- a mother of two who’s just back from Iraq and having a hard time with her wife and kids. (Somehow Lynn and Sam always end up with the LGBTQ vets for one-on-ones and family cases).

Family counseling is hard on Sam, much harder than the individual and group meetings. The reality of the spillover of PTSD and readjustment scares him, reminds him of how terribly he’d acted after Riley. Sam’s sister, Sarah got the worst of it back then and she’d borne the burden with a grace that Sam didn’t deserve. Now every time Sam has to sit with a vet while their kids or siblings or partners explain how their trauma is fucking everyone else up, an ugly heat simmers right under Sam’s skin.

With all that going on, Sam isn’t itching to watch Tony’s interview and he keeps his door closed all morning.

Steve sends a few texts while Sam is wading through assessments, referrals, and timesheets.

_Watched the Today Show. Have a mind to go to NYC and punch him in his obtuse face._

_Tony said accountability fourteen times. I counted. What a joke._

_I get that Beyoncé is saying that her man has a big dick. But what’s the double entendre for her? She has a big vagina? Is that cissexist if we know Beyoncé is cis?_

_I looked it up. It’s supposed to be about her butt. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that._

_Tony’s really playing this ‘we’re all fallible’ bullshit without mentioning that the government is made up of equally fallible people with a much longer track record of voting to fuck shit up._

_Does he really believe the shit he’s saying?_

_I’m sorry. How are you? I miss you._

_Also, Natasha told me about sexting a few months ago. Dick pics seem weird to me, but if you’re into it…_

_One more thing about Tony and then I’ll stop: he has such a smarmy face. I’ve never noticed it before, but it’s so smarmy._ _L_

Sam sends Steve a short response: _Go take a walk, baby._

When Sam gets his paperwork pile down from waist to knee-high, he knocks on Lynn’s door and they go to the commissary to grab lunch. They eat their sandwiches in Lynn’s office and she turns on her TV. Naturally, Tony’s on the screen.

Sam must not hide the curl of his lip as well as he would like because Lynn smiles and says, “You either love him or you hate him, right?”

Sam nods, then shrugs, then shakes his head. “It’s complicated.”

Lynn dabs a smear of mustard from her top lip. “I’m a smart cookie. Enlighten me.”

Sam shrugs again. “He means well. Or he means to mean well. But…I don’t know. I’m biased. Steve and he don’t get along.”

Lynn whistles. “The amount of people I hate on Erica’s behalf. My wife has literally hundreds of sworn enemies. There’s a dog walker – this hipster kid with the man-bun and plaid thing going on – he apparently walks too slow when Erica’s trying to get to the train every morning and now _I_ have to hate this poor boy for the rest of my life because Erica hates him. She has actually made me promise to run him down with my car if he’s ever around without the zoo of dogs in tow.”

“And you made the promise?” Sam asks incredulously. Lynn is a remarkably peaceful person since she left of the military. Gentle even, despite the bite of her conversation.

Lynn nods unself-consciously, as if it’s perfectly reasonable to resort to vehicular homicide over her wife’s inconveniences.

“Well, it’s different with me and Steve,” Sam points out. “We’re not married, for starters.”

Lynn narrows her eyes and stares at Sam with the screwed-up expression of someone trying to do calculus in their head. “Steve?” she says slowly. “You and Steve are the thing?”

“Lynn.”

“I always knew you had a crush, but I thought it was minor, nothing serious. You two are – he’s your new sexcapade?” Lynn’s near black eyes glitter with interest.

“I refuse to use that word, Lynn. And will you please keep your voice down? I think you just woke Holly up from her nap at the front desk.”

Lynn grins. “You’re not denying it, Sam.”

“I’m ignoring this whole digression. You hate some poor innocent dog walker because Erica holds grudges?”

 “I hate that kid with fiery passion,” Lynn says matter-of-factly. “Because I love Erica. Her battles are my battles.”

Sam huffs. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” He tears off a piece of ciabatta bread and crumbles it on his napkin.

“I take it Steve doesn’t like the registration act.”

“ _I_ don’t like the registration act. It’s dangerous and scary. We know what our government likes to do with its new toys. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Vietnam. Probably a lot more non-white countries have an idea or two. I don’t want to be one of our government’s new toys.” He tears his provolone cheese into pale strips and lines them up on Lynn’s desk. They leave greasy smudges on the glossy wood.

He glances at the TV again. Tony’s still talking. He’s wearing a navy suit and tie with a pale blue dress shirt underneath and he’s even taken off his signature sunglasses. He looks serious and smart. Sam wonders if one of his minions suggested the outfit. On the one hand, Sam can’t imagine Tony taking fashion advice from anyone except Pepper (and they’re on one of their breaks; they break up about as often as Tony retires from the Avengers); on the other, when has Tony ever brought down his brash persona even an iota without intervention? He must really mean business about getting this pro-reg shit going. _God, this sucks._

Lynn clears her throat. “It seems like you’re feeling two ways about it to me. You don’t want the government to use you like some little private army, but…?”

“But having a big, public fight about it is not high up on my list either. I’ve already had exactly one private fight and I’m wiped out. I just want to save the people who need saving without a bunch of old, white guys with vested interests and lobbyists’ money and very little moral fiber telling me when and how to do it. And don’t get me started on if this becomes an international thing.”

Lynn chews her lip thoughtfully as she folds her napkin into a tiny square. Her oval nails, painted a creamy taupe color, scratch against the desktop. “It’s gonna be a fight, Sam. I don’t know much about superhero-ing, but I can tell you that. It’s up to you – Stark, Cap, the green one, the whole gang to see if it’s going to be a public brawl in a Denny’s parking lot or a conversation in a conference room at HQ.”

Sam shakes his head and laughs. “Could you imagine? All of us punching each other like a bunch of kids. It won’t happen like that, that’s for sure.”

Lynn shrugs. “It’s not that hard to picture, honestly. Don’t you guys solve most of your hero problems by punching the bad guys?” She tucks a long lock of her straight, black hair behind her ear and leans forward on her elbows. “If you think someone’s wrong enough, Sam, you might just start to think they’re one of the bad guys.”

Lynn’s words stay with Sam all afternoon as he talks with Tori and her daughters and when he finally forces himself to sit down and listen to Tony’s interview. If Sam could divorce himself from the hypocrisy of Tony demanding accountability for anyone, he could kinda see where Tony’s coming from. Heck, Sam wouldn’t trust the Avengers either if he didn’t know each and every one of them personally. What _really_ separates them from vigilante thugs with a massive budget and a high profile? Sam bites his lip as a curl of anxiety tightens around his abdomen.

Tony’s explaining the registration bill to the TV journalist, Cynthia Miller. “It’s not this big bad noose around the neck of America’s superheroes,” he says. “It’s a promise that they can make to this country that they’re not going to act in ways that endanger civilians. That they’re going to let themselves be known, not hide in the shadows like criminals, and that they’re going to listen to direction from people who know a thing or two. What makes someone with a cool suit or super strength the arbiter of justice in this country?”

“This is quite the change from your stance a few years ago,” Cynthia observes. “When the government wanted to take your suits.”

Tony smiles. “I’ve grown a lot since then. Made some mistakes – some massive mistakes – and learned from them. _I_ shouldn’t be left unsupervised. We learned that the hard way. We shouldn’t have to learn that the hard way when it comes to the rest of the team.”

Tony fiddles with the end of his tie, his clear brown eyes sweeping across the audience beyond the camera. His smile is tight and uncomfortable, but Sam suspects he only sees the discomfort because he knows Tony, at least better than anyone in that studio does.

Cynthia taps her finger against her chin thoughtfully. “Mr. Stark, do you think this registration act—”

“And oversight,” Tony interrupts. He reaches over and pats Cynthia’s chair arm. “I’ve talked with a few senators and we’re definitely leaning toward registration _and_ oversight. A real mouthful to say, but it’s more accurate.”

Cynthia smiles graciously. “Do you think this registration and oversight bill can work as a sort of amends for the role you played with Ultron?”

“I don’t see it as making amends,” Tony says. “I see it as making the world safe -- not just from the outside threats. Not just from the monsters that look like monsters. The aliens who come through worm holes or the robots with world-destruction on the brain. We need to make the world safe from good-looking guys like me, like that dreamboat Steve Rogers.”

And with that, Tony winks at the camera and the clip ends.

Sam scowls. Maybe it’s Steve’s text from earlier about Tony looking smarmy, but Sam has never noticed until now how very punchable Tony’s face is. How does anyone stand it? His staff? His dates? Rhodey? How is Rhodey not constantly punching Tony right in his arrogant, hypocritical, smarmy face?

Maybe it’s like the way Sam never really found Riley’s over-the-top ways annoying even when half their unit had detailed murder fantasies about him. Love – platonic or romantic – could do some logic-defying things.

In fact, Rhodey and Tony’s friendship might be a cornerstone of the Opposites Attract School of Thought. Rhodey so rule-abiding, fastidious, and level-headed. Tony a brash, slap-dash, tornado. And somehow, they’ve made it work for almost thirty years. Maybe geniuses make do with whatever other geniuses they come across. Most people forget Rhodey went to MIT too, that he is quite literally a rocket scientist with a military rank.

Whenever Tony does something particularly boneheaded and Sam asks Rhodey how he puts up with him, Rhodey shrugs and says, “You know the whites. Always doing something.” As if that’s any sort of answer at all. (Although Sam has taken to using the line when his mama or siblings demand an explanation for anything Steve says or does that’s a little too ??? Like all the jumping off tall buildings and saying things like _There’s no greater country than the United States of America_ with a straight face.)

That’s all beside the point, though. The fact of the matter is Tony’s making a cogent argument in favor of the registration act that will appeal to non-powered people who’ve grown up on a diet of ‘resist and distrust power.’ Which is a huge swath of the country. Banking on people’s fear of future oppression is a sure-fire way to win a popularity contest. (Not that Sam is so cynical as to think Tony doesn’t genuinely believe what he’s preaching.)

And Steve and Sam’s position, on the other hand, boils down to “trust us and everything will be fine.” Ugh.

 _Things don’t look so good for the home team_ , Sam thinks. He stuffs a few files and his work laptop into his backpack in the hopes of getting some more work done tonight after dinner with Rhodey. Rhodey wants to talk about women troubles, which is of high interest to Sam who didn’t even know Rhodey had multiple women in his life to qualify for women troubles. Normally, Sam’s the one who needs advice and a space to vent; this ought to be an interesting reversal of roles. And a lovely break from all these ugly thoughts about the registration act – sorry, registration and oversight act.

When Sam walks out of his office, Lynn is talking to another counselor – a tall, heavyset black guy with a deep, calming voice that reminds Sam of mountains and glaciers and other geologically-enduring phenomenon. Lynn reaches out as Sam goes past them in the hallway and says, “Peace, baby.”  

Leon, the tall man with her, inclines his head to Sam and says, “Self-care is real important for people in our position, Wilson.” He says it like a warning and Sam nods in agreement.

Self-care is ignoring the hurtling problem of registration for a night. Self-care is getting drunk with Rhodey at this new jazz lounge. Self-care is not replaying Tony’s interview in his head.

 _I’ll be home around ten,_ Sam texts Steve. _Wait up for me so we can listen to Beyoncé for a bit. ;)_

Rhodey is at the bar when Sam arrives at Century, the new jazz place. The man on the door recognizes Sam when he’s coming in and waives the door charge, one of those perks that only happens on the black side of town. White folks aren’t so good at picking him out of a line-up as Sam Wilson, the Falcon. Not unless he’s with Steve, who they can recognize from a hundred yards on a rainy day. Sam isn’t too pressed about it. It’s nice to get a freebie here and there, but to navigate his life with the kind of fame Steve does would exhaust and overwhelm him far too easily.

Rhodey’s smile is a little tired when he turns on his stool to welcome Sam. He’s in a royal blue V-neck tee and dark gray jeans, far more casual than Sam usually sees him.

“What’s with the look? It’s downright hobo by your standards.”

Rhodey tilts his head. “I didn’t go into work today. And it’s warm out.”

“God, I can’t wait for the weekend. This week has been all I can handle.”

Rhodey nods and holds up a glass of dark liquid. “I got the good scotch, if that’s any indication of my week.”

“The lady trouble?” Sam asks. He takes off his jacket and folds it over his arm. The bartender catches his eye and smiles warmly, the sort of practiced smile that makes its recipient feel special and invincible. A charming smile.

“What can I get for you?” he asks. He has a southern drawl – authentic, unadorned, and oddly rare even here in (technically) the South. Sam has found that most people who come to D.C. (iron out their accents, make them lie flat and inconspicuous. He likes that this guy doesn’t do that. Doesn’t have any pretensions. He also likes the seemingly incongruous experience of a tall, Asian man with skin like burnished gold and a molasses-thick southern accent.

“Riesling?” Sam asks.

“We have a few kinds,” Beautiful Barkeep says, “but you look like a man who likes things sweet.”

Sam’s cheeks burn. “Sweet’s good,” he says.

“Coming right up,” Barkeep says.

Rhodey sips his scotch and watches Sam knowingly over the rim of his glass. “You leaving here with our bartender tonight?” he asks. It would not mark the first time Sam has hit it off with a perfect stranger and left Rhodey to his own devices. A dickish move, sure, but Sam has known some real loneliness loving Steve these last few years.

He shakes his head. “I will not.”

“He’s interested,” Rhodey assures him.

“And I would be too if…” Sam trails off, oddly reluctant to articulate this thing with Steve. He still hasn’t told anybody, not really. Nat knows because she was there when it all fell together; Lynn guessed and Sam didn’t deny. But telling Rhodey is _telling_ Rhodey. “I got some other stuff going on.”

“Who’s the lucky human?” Rhodey asks, smirking.

“We’re not here to talk about me,” Sam laughs.

The bartender comes back over and hands him a glass of white wine. He winks and says, “Let me know if you need anything” and Sam’s cheeks burn again.

Sam sips his wine and ignores Rhodey’s pointed looks. “We’re here to talk about your lady troubles. Talked to Agent Hill recently?”

Rhodey grunts. “Yeah, not a fun conversation to be perfectly honest.”

“Not the usual serving of extremely professional conversation with lots of sexual tension?”

Rhodey scowls. “Nope, just regular tension. Wanted to tell me off about the registration act.”

Sam sets his glass on the bar and waits.

“Monica and I – I don’t think I told you – we had a weirdly good time down in New Orleans,” Rhodey says abruptly, not following through on the registration talk. “Alcohol was flowing freely. You didn’t tell me she was so cool.”

Sam’s brow wrinkles. “I told you several times, actually. But you were mad that she can’t stand Tony. Which if that’s disqualifying potential lady friends, you might find that your pool is extraordinarily small.”

“Shut up,” Rhodey says, shoving Sam’s shoulder. “Anyway, we didn’t talk about Tony. Actually, after a bit, we didn’t do much talking at all.”

“Rhodey!” Sam says, shocked. Monica’s not really the type for casual dalliances.

“She’s really great,” Rhodey says defensively.

“Of course she is. I’m just surprised that either of you made a move.”

Rhodeye shrugs. “Like I said. Alcohol. Inhibitions. A spark.”

“You didn’t say anything about a spark,” Sam teases.

Rhodey rolls his eyes, ready to tell Sam to fuck off when a trio of women, bubbly with wine, come over and interrupt.

“I knew it. It is them. The Falcon and Iron Patriot.”

“War Machine,” Sam corrects, grinning at Rhodey, who glares at him.

“We saw your boy on TV today,” one of the women says. “Are the Avengers breaking up?”

Sam and Rhodey frown. “Not that we’ve heard,” Sam says.

The woman exchanges glances with her girls. “Well, we just wanted to say you two are our favorites. You should get some black mamas out there too -- kicking ass and wearing cool suits. That’d be fire.”

Rhodey nods and smiles. “Agreed. Very much agreed. Let us know if you know some beautiful ladies like yourself who want to fight the bad guys with us. We’re recruiting.”

The women giggle and totter away on their spindly heels, leaving behind the smell of coconut oil and Love Spell perfume.

“Wonder where they got that idea,” Sam says. He watches the bartender twinkle at a couple on the other end of the bar. “Us breaking up.”

“Lot of ideas swirling around in the aftermath of the Today Show. That’s what has rather prematurely doomed me and Monica. Tony’s big mouth. She very vocally does not like the act. Tony forced us to talk about it and now she’s mad at me. Tony always did know how to ruin a good thing for me.”

“Get you some new friends,” Sam jokes (half-jokes).

Rhodey shrugs. “Nah, he’s good. Bros before women we’d like to date.’ Classing up a vulgar phrase, since the sentiment’s so good.”

Sam grimaces. “You gotta admit he shouldn’t have gone on national television without at least talking to the team, though.”

“Why?” Rhodey asks. The blue light from the neon signage behind the bar glances off the high points of his face – his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose, his cupid’s bow. The effect is futuristic and strange. “Because Steve disagrees with him?”

“No.” Sam pushes his empty wine glass toward the center of the bar as an invitation for another. “Because now it’s a very real, public conversation. Tony legitimized it.”

Rhodey frowns and turns on his stool. “It was legitimate the moment regular citizens started writing letters to their congressional representatives saying they were scared of us.”

Sam groans. “Not you too.”

“Yes,” Rhodey says firmly, defiantly. “Me too.”

An ugly, wary silence falls on them like an anvil. Sam can’t find the words to lift the weight, to restore them to light, fluffy conversation. He did not come out tonight to get in a fight with Rhodey, and certainly not about this bullshit that he is doing his damnedest to compartmentalize. But the compartments are as leaky as a sieve, it would seem, and this mess keeps leaking over into areas that have been clearly demarcated as ‘the good things in Sam’s life that he would like to keep clear of the foolery.’

Although to be perfectly honest, Sam should have seen this coming from a long way off. He’s been so focused on circumscribing and avoiding that he didn’t follow the threads of logic to their inevitable ends. Not only is Rhodey loyal to Tony; the guy has an almost pathological faith in systems and order and rules. Words like ‘registration’ and ‘oversight’ probably get him off at night.

Sam holds the delicate stem of the wine glass in his fist, willing the bartender to stop dazzling other customers and come by with a refill.

“What if we just put this whole conversation off limits for tonight?” he suggests. “We can disagree about it in the morning.”

Rhodey shrugs. “Yeah, fine,” he says. “I’m really fucking tired of talking about it. And there is a truffle macaroni and cheese appetizer on this menu.”

“I’m looking at these crab croquettes,” Sam says. “Lemon saffron crème and red chili jam. I don’t know why crème sounds so much more delicious than cream.”

“It’s the French,” Rhodey says knowledgeably. “Did you know Monica speaks French. Creole French, which is apparently very different from the European variety. Sounds amazing though.”

“The people on my mama’s side are Haitian,” Sam says. “Monica and I like to compare some of the differences between New Orleans and Port-au-Prince.”

The conversation winds from there, but it doesn’t fully relax. Neither of them drink as much as they had originally intended, not now that allegiances have been made known. It’s dangerous to drink too freely with the opposition. Sam doesn’t want to think it, but his actions are fueled by the unarticulated thought anyway. They to tiptoe like ballerinas through some conversational landmines and the hardest part is to pretend like they’re not doing it, like everything is exactly as it always is with them. Dinner with Rhodey – usually the most relaxing, good time of Sam’s week – is draining. As if some mad scientist is pointing an energy-sapping ray right at Sam’s chest.

Sam leaves the bartender a gratuitous tip and when he glances at his receipt, he sees a name (Michael) and number. Rhodey glances at the scrawl at the bottom of the receipt, but says nothing.

“Want me to drop you off at home?” Rhodey asks in the parking lot, when he sees Sam opening his phone app to request a car service.

Sam shrugs. “You live on the other side of town. It’s fine.” Not that the distance has ever stopped them before. Rhodey has driven Sam home almost every dinner date before today.

Rhodey doesn’t push it. “Guess I’ll be seeing you. Sure you’re not gonna hang around to take Micky home?”

“Michael,” Sam corrects automatically.

Rhodey smirks. “Sorry. Michael.”

Sam glances over at a black sedan pulling into the lot. “That’s me,” he says.

“Okay,” Rhodey says. “Sorry it was weird tonight. We can disagree about this, right?”

Sam presses his lip into a thin line of doubt and shrugs. “I think if it was just me and you? Yeah, we could disagree. But we both have our white boys.”

“Both of whom are in a permanent state of arrested development,” Rhodey adds.

Sam nods. “Food was good here, though.”

“Yeah, the aioli sauce.”

“Yeah.”

They both peter out awkwardly, not quite knowing how to say goodbye under the circumstances.

Sam’s driver absolves them of any sort of meaningful farewells by honking his horn and Sam pats Rhodey’s shoulder and hurries across the parking lot.

His head falls back on the head rest the moment he’s in the car and his eyes close like windows slamming in an old creaky house.

“Long day?” his driver asks in heavily accented English.

Sam cracks his eyes open a smidge and nods.

“I’ll have you home in a jiffy,” his driver promises. “No traffic for you. I know the back ways.”

Sam nods again, trusting that he doesn’t have a loon kidnapper chauffeuring him to god-knows-where to steal his kidneys. That only happens in _Lifetime_ movies anyway and his driver looks so cheery and innocuous with his wine-red turban and salt-and-pepper mustache and beard. There’s a picture of a woman and girl hanging from the rearview mirror. Men with pictures of their daughter and wife prominently displayed don’t go around stealing kidneys. Sam falls asleep somewhere around the thought: _I didn’t even ask my driver about_ his _day._

Sam wakes up when the motion of the car stops. At least he hopes that’s what wakes him up and not the polite, uncomfortable ahem of his driver.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, climbing out of the car.

“Have a beautiful night,” the driver says and Sam can tell he means it genuinely. The sincerity of his tone is like a balm.

It takes Sam a second or two to realize there’s a car parked in his driveway that isn’t Steve’s silver Prius or his own forest green junk heap car that his insurance money after the Barnes incident just barely covered. It was difficult to make an agent see that a brainwashed assassin tearing the roof and steering wheel off of his car should be covered under the ‘terroristic events’ clause in his contract. Steve offered to buy Sam a new car (as well he should; Sam holds Steve responsible for all Barnes’ actions, since he’s apparently ‘not allowed’ to be mad at poor Bucky himself). Sam only said no because it felt too weird. They were already crossing a lot of lines on their first cross-country search for Bucky and then when they came back to D.C. and Steve moved in with him. Buying him a car felt too much like something when Sam was desperately pretending like there was nothing. But unless Steve had gone out today and bought Sam a black sedan with tinted windows and Maryland plates, someone is sitting in his driveway.

Sam bites his lip and glances at the windows of his condo. No lights, although Steve’s bedroom is at the back, so he could be in there. Sam never carries a gun. It wasn’t a good idea when he first came back from Afghanistan and had a lot of rage and fear fucking up his head and these days, he’s got the best protection money can’t buy: Steve.

He lopes up to the car on the passenger side and raps the window. He stands a little to the side of it so whoever’s in the driver’s seat will have to shoot through the metal of the door to get to him. The window rolls down and the thin strains of classical music slip out into the night.

“Get in, Sam,” a woman’s voice says.

Sam touches the door handle.

“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t want to drive the creepiest, most mysterious car to your house. But working for the CIA now…”

Sam smiles and looks in through the window. “Sharon,” he says.

“Hiya, Sam. How have you been?”

“Eh,” Sam says.

“Yeah,” Sharon agrees. She tousles her hair back from her face. “I know SHIELD doesn’t exist anymore (at least not the way it did), but I can’t help feeling that someone’s gonna call me at four in the morning to help run crisis control on this whole thing.”

“We’d love to have you,” Sam says. “If the CIA could spare you.”

Sharon smiles. “Get in. I need to talk to you and I’ll feel a little better if I know no one can overhear.”

“That kind of conversation?” Sam jokes, but the fat ripples of dread are getting fatter and ripplier in his stomach. He climbs in and shuts the door. Sharon rolls up the window and presses a button on her steering wheel that makes the air in the car feel thick and close. Sam’s ears pop. “Ugh.”

“Yeah, the anti-spyware could be a little less invasive,” Sharon admits.

“It’s sitting on my chest breathing hot, stinky breath in my face.”

Sharon nods. “I’ll tell our tech guys you said that. Well, not _you_ you. I’ll tell them it has been said. I’ve been complaining about it for months, but they’re convinced it’s not that big of a deal.”

“What’s it do?” Sam asks.

“Neutralizes listening bugs, wires, phones. Anything we think might get a conversation overheard by the wrong person. It feels a bit oppressive, but it’s effective. So.”

“So.” Sam looks through the windshield at Steve’s Prius with its COEXIST sticker on the back that Sam couldn’t talk Steve out of getting. (“You look like a suburban mom who went to Vassar and thinks she’s liberal for voting for a lady Republican!”) “Can anyone see in?” he asks.

“Car looks empty unless you focus really hard on it or we start moving too much.”

“Okay,” Sam says, bracing himself. “What’s up?”

Sharon reaches in the backseat and pulls up a thick manila folder. She hands it to Sam, but he can’t make out the words in the dim interior. He doesn’t have to. Sharon turns to him, her pale face half in shadow. “I found Barnes.”

Her words are like a kick to the chest (incidentally, one of the many injuries Barnes inflicted on Sam that day on the Potomac). “Where?” Sam rasps.

“Not three hours away. He’s in Virginia, southern Virginia. Didn’t stray too far.”

Sam nods. “How’d you find him?”

“The CIA has some very sophisticated search algorithms,” Sharon says.

“They know you’re looking?”

“I don’t think so.” Sharon tousles her hair again. It’s longer and paler than Sam remembers. Maybe it’s just the dim light or maybe she dyed it for a covert operation at some point. “The search has been running deep web,” Sharon continues. “Subterranean. Only way they’d find it is to know they should be looking.”

Sam nods.

“He got in a car accident. A semi T-boned him. The trucker says that a man ripped the door off his crumpled-up car and walked away. Said he looked a little banged up, like maybe he’d dislocated an arm and sprained something in his leg. He was limping. The trucker didn’t go after him. He was too in shock. But he remembered that the guy had a metal arm. And he said the guy looked haunted, feral even.”

“You’re sure it’s him?” Sam asks. His voice comes out funny.

“I’m sure,” Sharon says. “Like I said, he’s only a three-hour drive away. I checked it out personally. I’m just getting back. I didn’t call because…well, I don’t really know where things stand anymore with SHIELD, with the Avengers, with anything. But I knew Steve would want to know. I pulled into your driveway only seconds before you did. Wasn’t sure it was you for a second there. You’ve bulked up some since last time I saw you.”

Sam nods, doesn’t mention that it’s been almost a year since they’ve been face-to-face and at the time he was racked with jealousy because he thought she and Steve were flirting towards something.  “Do you think Barnes will stay put?” he asks.

“No reason to think he’ll flee. The trucker gave his report and kept on toward Atlanta. Luckily, even in the sleepiest towns in Virginia, they’ve gone digital and I doctored the police report a bit to make it not so obvious that it’s Barnes down there. Hopefully, no one else was running a search as extensive as mine. I wouldn’t cling to hope though. If he moves on, he’s gone. We can’t cross our fingers and expect another incident like this.”

“I know,” Sam says. “Did you see him for yourself?” he asks.

Sharon nods. “Feral might have been too harsh a word. Definitely isolated. Definitely twitchy. I didn’t get close. Took some long-range pictures in case Steve needs more proof.”

Sam huffs humorlessly. “Steve won’t need convincing,” he says. “We followed every puff of wind across this rather vast country looking for Barnes.”

Sharon pats Sam’s shoulder. “You’re a good guy,” she says. “You rescue people; you’ll rescue Barnes.”

“It’s funny,” Sam says. “You’re not the first person to say that to me this week.”

“Because it’s true.” Sharon smiles. It’s cute. She looks like the sort of person who makes cupcakes for her friends just because.

“Thanks, Sharon. I know I don’t look particularly grateful that you found the brainwashed assassin who tried to murder me, Steve, Nat, and millions of other people, but I am. It’s just been a really, really hard week.”

“I’m making it harder, aren’t I?”

Sam nods sadly.

Sharon leans over and kisses his cheek, then moves in for a full-on hug. She smells like lemon and vanilla. “Go inside; light a candle; take a shower; watch some shitty TV. This fuckshow will all be here in the morning.”

Sam laughs. Sharon saying ‘fuckshow’ is ridiculous. “Thanks,” he says. He opens the car door and the awful, heavy-pressure atmosphere drops and his ears pop again.

Sharon winces. “Warn a gal,” she chides. “Tell Steve I said hi.”

“Will do.”

Sam stands on his steps until Sharon pulls away and turns at the stop sign at the end of the street.

He takes a deep breath, looks down at the manila folder in his hand – looking innocuous enough, but more terrible than a grenade -- and goes inside his house.

Steve is on the landing at the top of the stairs. “I thought I heard a car pull up,” he says. He’s bare-chested and glistening with water, a towel around his hips.

“Yeah,” Sam says. He smiles up at Steve as he descends the stairs, cherishing this last moment before Bucky Barnes ruins everything. (That’s not fair, Sam knows. But he’s gonna think it, at least in the safety and privacy of his own mind.)

Steve examines Sam’s expression and frowns. “Whatever’s bothering you can wait,” he says firmly.

“Bu—”

“It can wait,” Steve says again. “Let me take care of you.” He pulls Sam’s work backpack off his shoulder and takes the manila folder out of his hand without reading its label. He puts them both on the foyer table, the folder completely covered by the bag. A twinge of guilt plucks at Sam’s chest, but he ignores it. He needs a few more minutes of Steve looking at him like this.

Steve strokes down Sam’s arm, then intertwines their hands. He presses soft kisses to Sam’s cheeks and Sam turns his head to catch Steve’s mouth, but Steve teases him, avoids him. Sam’s skin prickles with anticipation, responsive to every gentle exhalation of Steve’s warm breath, a fog of want filling his brain.

“Steve,” he says, struggling weakly against this most selfish impulse.

“Is it life or death?” Steve asks. He still hasn’t kissed Sam’s desperately sensitive lips, has instead taken a detour to the column of Sam’s throat while his hands move across his chest. He unfastens the buttons of Sam’s shirt and continues his downward exploration. When he’s kneeling, he nuzzles against Sam’s hardening length.

“No,” Sam sighs. “Not life or death.”

“Then this is the part where I make some cheesy comment about big egos.” Steve looks up at Sam with twinkling eyes.

Sam smiles. “And this is the part where I let you.”

Steve unbuckles Sam’s belt and slowly drags the zipper of his pants down. “What do you want, Sam? Let me give you what you want.”

Sam reaches out and touches Steve’s shoulder as he steps out of his shoes and then the tangle of his trousers. “Kiss me,” he says.

“I _have_ been kissing you,” Steve teases. He mouths at Sam’s dick through the thin cotton of his boxers and Sam grunts with surprise. “Is there somewhere in particular you’d like me to kiss you?” He presses his lips to Sam’s hipbones.

“Are you always going to be such a tease?” Sam asks.

Steve shrugs. “I don’t know. Are you always going to be this easy to tease?”

“Says the man who was begging me to let him come a week ago. Pitiful begging. _Oh, please please please_ begging.”

A rose-pink flush appears on Steve’s cheeks. “I could do that to you, too,” he says. “I _choose_ not to. I’m responsible with my sexual powers.” He stands up so he’s crowding Sam back up against the front door. “I could make you beg if that’s what you wanted. Really tease you. If you wanted.” He drags his fingertip along the underside of Sam’s dick, the barrier of cotton muting the sensation. “I could make your legs shake,” he murmurs. “I could fuck you so slow, Sam. Keep you right on the edge. Just one more touch to make it all better, but I won’t give it to you. I could make it so good for you, Sam, but never quite enough. That’s what being a tease means.” He kisses Sam’s cupid’s bow, then the fullness of his mouth.

Little curls of electricity shiver across Sam’s skin, fizzing and sparking. He sighs into Steve, wanting what is being described. Steve’s bath towel is in a pool around their feet, his dick bumping insistently against Sam’s stomach.

Sam takes Steve’s hand and pulls him toward the staircase. He sheds his clothes as they ascend.

Everything else can wait.


	8. The First Part Is Supposed To Be Easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam knows where Bucky is and the Registration Act looms large.

“The first part is supposed to be easy,” the brown skinned girl with the Bambi eyes and buzzcut says. She presses her lips to Sam’s. She tastes like the salt from her margarita. “It’s supposed to be fun.” She kisses him again, slower but firmer. “It’s supposed to be hot.” She bites his lip. “And it’s supposed to be easy.”

Maia pulls back and looks him the eye. It’s a questioning look, a final once-over before she comes to some conclusion. She tilts her head sadly, then unstraddles his lap. She steps back and when he makes to follow her, she presses a hand into his chest and shakes her head. She’s leaning over him now, the front of her shirt pulled forward by gravity, so he can see the valley of her full breasts. He meets her Bambi-eyed gaze.

“Maybe I sound shallow,” she says. “Maybe it’s not what you’re used to or you’ve forgotten. But for me, the first part – the dating, the will-this-turn-into-something? part, it should be fun. We shouldn’t have to work this hard.”

“Maia, I—”

“I’m not blaming you, Sam.” Maia fiddles with the tassel of one of her shoulder-grazing earrings. “I’ve had my eye on you since you got here. I rushed you. You’re not ready to date yet. We spend way too much of our time at the VA helping damaged people. I just – right at the beginning of a relationship should be easy. And you’re cute and you’re funny and you care about people so much and so genuinely, but you’re hard, Sam. I’m not looking for hard.”

She’s right. Sam knows she’s right, but he doesn’t want her to be. So, he stands up and kisses her. He drags her shorts down her soft, thick thighs and falls to his knees and makes her come. He’s saying, “Look how easy and fun I can be,” but when she stays the night, he has to stumble to the bathroom and sit on the cold, tile floor while his demons shake him. The door swings open and he sees her curvy calves, the dimples in her knees. He lifts his eyes slowly, like it costs him something, until he’s looking into her beautiful face. She shakes her head sadly. “Oh Sam,” she says, and she sits with him until he falls asleep cradled in her arms, but she doesn’t return his texts to come over after that and when they run into each other at the VA, she has that same “oh Sam” look in her eyes.

The first part is supposed to be easy.

Sam watches the light from his window travel from Steve’s calves to the small of his back to the nape of his neck until it halos his face. He’s breathtaking to look at sometimes, especially when he’s quiet or asleep, when there’s no tension in his jaw or worry between his brows. Sam likes how Steve looks right after sex, all glowy and relaxed and farmer boy pleased with himself, with Sam. Or when he’s taking his first cup of coffee in the morning, his eyes heavy with sleepiness, all his movements slower and softer than usual.

That’s how he’d looked the first time Sam realized his casual crush had turned into the real thing. They were just out of a fire fight in Jacksonville, Florida and they’d retreated to a crummy motel to recover – Sam, Nat, and Steve. Nat was curled up into a tight little ball, asleep next to Sam. Steve was sitting on the edge of the second bed, blinking slowly, every once in a while, turning his head from side-to-side like he could shake the sleepiness away. Sam knew Steve was trying to psych himself up to go on his morning run, even after the fight they’d just been in the night before. Finally, Sam took mercy on him and said, “Man, lay your ass back down. You’re tired.” And Steve’s eyes had fluttered shut before he even swung his legs back onto the bed. And Sam thought to himself, “Oh fuck, I love that dumbass.”

He hadn’t ever thought it would come to this: them, in bed together, declared, in love. And now all he can think about is Maia saying, “The first part is supposed to be easy.”

Steve is the poster child for high-functioning depression with tendencies toward suicidal recklessness that often trigger Sam’s own spirals about his dead partner Riley. The Avengers are teetering on a precipice and at the bottom of the cliff are the masses who either apotheosize them or hate them. Tony, Rhodey, and Nat are against Steve, Fury, and Sam. Misty has called out of the blue. And now, Steve’s long-lost brother and friend who “died” in WWII, was captured by Hydra, brainwashed into compliance, sent to kill Steve, broke his brainwashing, and disappeared into the ether has been found. In southern Virginia. A three-hour’s drive from here.

This is the first part and it isn’t easy.

Sam rolls over and grabs his phone off the charging dock. 6:20AM. He should already be up. He climbs out of bed and ambles sleepily through his morning routine: brush teeth, shower, get dressed. He peeks out of the bathroom at Steve. He is still asleep. Sam’s smile is smug when he glances at himself in the mirror. Hard not to feel a little self-satisfied when you wear out a super soldier.

His phone vibrates on the nightstand and Steve makes a sleepy sound in his throat – somewhere between a groan and a sigh. Sam hurries to answer it before Steve wakes up.

“Rhodey, what’s wrong?” he murmurs.

“Why are you whispering?” Rhodey asks, whispering too.

“Steve is—it’s early,” he says. He remembers that he hasn’t told Rhodey about Steve. He remembers that Rhodey is in favor of the registration act and that it ruined their dinner last night. Tension threads through the muscles of his neck and shoulders.

“It’s not early for people like us,” Rhodey says. Sam sneaks out of the bedroom. “A lot of shit gets done before the crack of dawn.”

“Like?”

“Like the executive order the president is getting ready to sign. Staying all Avengers activity.”

“Excuse me?” Sam stops at the bottom of the stairs and grips the bannister. A nasty bolt of panic has turned his insides electric and painful.

“I’m just telling you, so you don’t find out on the news this morning.”

“We don’t answer to the government,” Sam says.

“Are you Americans? In America?”

“Rhodes!”

“Look, you can make the argument that the Avengers is an extrajudicial police group operating in America beyond the scope of American law, but I doubt that’s going to go over well in court. So, I recommend that you and your white boy don’t make that argument until you’re sure you can win.”

“This is—”

“I mean it, Sam,” Rhodey continues. “Don’t be stupid.”

The line goes dead.

Sam stares at the screen for several long minutes, without a single coherent thought forming. A text from his mama makes his phone light up, but he doesn’t read it. Another text comes in from Lynn five minutes later. He hasn’t moved. Another text. From Rhodey. (To say he’s kidding? Please to say he’s kidding.”

 _Here’s what I’m seeing,_ Rhodey writes, and then sends a screenshot of a memo:

_Members of the vigilante group known as the Avengers, including but not limited to Nicholas Fury, Anthony Stark, Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Natalia Alianovna Romanova, Colonel James Rhodes, Samuel Wilson, Bruce Banner, and all other known affiliates will disband and suspend all activity related to the unauthorized use of violence against world citizens until such time as hearings and court proceedings may come to an accord regarding these violent non-state actors. Avengers activity will be suspended until Congress shall vote on bill S. 234353, hereafter known as the Registration Act and that activity shall be circumscribed in what way the bill shall pass. Any unauthorized law enforcement activities carried about by members of the Avengers (including but not limited to the parties explicitly cited above) will lead to their arrest and detainment._

Another text from Rhodey: _Hearings start on Monday._

Sam has to read the memo seven or eight times before the message even begins to penetrate the soft protective layer of fat over his brain.

This is bad. That’s all he can think. This is so beyond anything Sam thought could happen that his brain is having difficulty holding all the facts together at once.

Fact, the first: The president of the United States is signing an executive order. Fact, the second: The Avengers are a violent, non-state actor. Fact, the third: They will be arrested and detained. Fact, the fourth: their activity will be circumscribed by the Registration Act. Fact, the fifth: Fuck.

Sam can hear these facts one at a time, but they don’t coalesce into a full, singular unit of meaning for several long minutes.

And then Sam does what he always does in times of crisis. He pretends it’s fine. He goes into the kitchen and pulls out the half loaf of bread in the bread box that’s probably a day away from complete irredeemable staleness. He grabs some eggs, half-and-half, vanilla, butter, sugar, and cinnamon. He whisks it all together while he browns the bread in the oven. He makes French toast, just like his mama used to make it when he lost a basketball game in high school or when he came back from Afghanistan, no Riley, no soul, no hope. And there she was with her stick-of-butter-and-heap-of-sugar French toast. He makes more than he’ll be able to eat. More than Steve will be able to eat, too. He puts thick, fatty slabs of bacon in a second skillet.

Steve surprises Sam when he kisses the side of his neck and says, “Good morning,” his voice husky and thick with just-shrugged off sleep.

“Morning. How’d you sleep?” Sam turns his head to receive a peck on the lips.

Steve smiles against his mouth. “I slept too late.”

Sam shrugs. “You looked so peaceful. And after a workout like you had last night…you deserved the rest.”

Steve’s ears flush. “I sleep better when you’re with me,” he says. “ _Not_ ,” he emphasizes, “because you tire me out.”

Sam grins. “Whatever you say, Steve Rogers.”

They eat breakfast in the nook overlooking the backyard. The sky is going to be a brilliant blue again today. What was it Sam had thought when Hill gave him the news about the registration act. _Nothing out here is less beautiful because everything else just got so ugly._

He watches Steve eat and Steve flashes him looks and smiles that are by turns appreciative, lovestruck, and glad. This is going to suck all the more because Steve is in such a beaming good mood. Sam commits this breakfast moment to memory, like a photograph, like a home movie he can pop in down the road.

Steve turns on the news, so he can watch while he washes the dishes. Sam could leave, could go look for his shoes and keys for a while, so he’s not here when Steve sees what the president has done. What Rhodey and Tony and Nat have done. But he goes into the living room and sits on the sofa and he watches the news with Steve. Rand Enterprises stock has increased, a bomb went off in a London train station, two famous actors announce their engagement, a new medical breakthrough may totally eradicate Type 1 Diabetes, neo-Nazi cult leader Heinrich Zemo is leaving his complex in Montana to hold a rally in D.C.

“It’s sickening that people like that asshole have followers,” Steve says from the kitchen, disgust dripping from his words. “He preaches hate and fascism. I’d really like to kick his ass.”

Sam nods. “This idea that everyone’s point of view deserves air time is fucking insane.”

“Yeah.” Then, “Isn’t Heinrich a little on the nose, even for a neo-Nazi?”

“The New York Times ran a story about him and his cult two years ago,” Sam remembers. “His real name’s Peter Little.”

Steve’s jaw tightens. “He’s going to find out the hard way that Nazis don’t get to come to our town without consequence.” He dries his hands on a dish towel and comes to sit on the arm of the sofa next to Sam. “What do you say we attend this little rally of his? Rattle his cage?”

Sam snorts. “Exactly how I want to spend the prime brunch hours of my weekend.” He softens his words with a kiss to Steve’s knuckles. They watch in grim silence as the reporter shows footage of Zemo’s compound in Montana and outline his absurd theology. The news cuts to a laundry detergent commercial.

“Do you still have my gym key card?” Steve asks. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “It’s in my bag.”

Steve heads to the foyer and returns with Sam’s backpack and the manila envelope. Sharon’s envelope. Bucky. Sam’s heart pounds uncomfortably in his chest and his French toast makes a sudden, desperate bid for freedom. He swallows.

Steve tosses the envelope on the coffee table, thoroughly disinterested in its contents and rifles through the front pocket of Sam’s bag. He pulls out his key card. “Thanks,” he says. He nods at the envelope. “Did Fury give you something to do?” he asks. “Or are you bringing VA work home again? Because I distinctly remember you saying you wanted to work on some work-life-Avenging balance.” He smiles at Sam teasingly.

“No, it’s actually…It’s actually…” Sam can’t get the words out. He may not have thrown up his breakfast yet, but it’s still sitting heavy somewhere between the base of his throat and his chest. He glances at the TV. The news anchor is talking about the national debt crisis, using words like “irreparable” and “trillions” that should really fuck with Sam’s head. The news anchors still haven’t mentioned the executive order. “I saw Sharon yesterday,” he says. “I bumped into Sharon.”

Steve’s eyes widen. “How is she? Where’d you see her?”

The doorbell rings.

“Expecting a package?” Steve asks as he lopes toward the door.

Sam rubs at the thick lump in his chest. “Mama might have got inspired to send something since I visited,” he called.

Steve opens the front door and there is a concussive burst of shouting voices, yelling out words that overlap and echo and blend into one blurred nonsensical experience. Reporters.

“Captain America!” someone yells.

“Steve Rogers! Steve, what are your thoughts about Tony Stark endorsing the Registration Act and where do you stand?”

“Captain, do you intend to abide by the president’s executive order?”

“Are the Avengers disbanding?”

“Sources say that Senator Ross has been having secret meetings with the new SHIELD director? Do you know who that person is or the content of their liaisons?”

“Captain!”

“Steve!”

Sam walks up to the door and smiles cheerily at the flashing cameras and microphones shoved up into Steve’s face, and then he slowly and firmly pushes his door closed.

Steve blinks, as though coming out of a fugue state.

“It’s not even eight in the morning,” he mumbles.

Sam guides him back to the sofa and hands him his glass of orange juice. “Yeah, reporters don’t need sleep and they don’t follow the social etiquette of our time. They’re vampires.”

Steve laughs. “I think you’re going to have to work from home today if you don’t want to fight your way through the crowd.”

“Steve, I have super powers you have no idea about.”

Steve raises his eyebrows.

“To the paparazzi, I’m invisible.”

“Is that right?”

“Oh yeah, they can’t see me unless I’m fully in Falcon gear and even then, they have to squint to make me out. Black skin works like camouflage sometimes.”

Steve wrinkles his nose. “I’m torn because I want everyone to see you because you’re perfect, but also reporters are – as you said – vampires and it might be to your advantage that they don’t notice you.”

“Welcome to my life, babe.”

“Babe?” Steve asks, smiling.

Sam rolls his eyes. “I’m going to call into work and let them know the situation.”

“And stay home with me?”

“And _work_ from home.”

Sam calls Meredith and texts Lynn and grabs his laptop from his desk in his office. He pauses in his bedroom to change into sweats and a T-shirt. No need to look the part if no one’s going to see him. He goes back downstairs and his eye lands heavily on the manila envelope.

He needs to tell Steve. Leaving it out here in the open is dangerous and stupid otherwise. And hiding it isn’t an option. At that point, Sam will have made a choice. The wrong, bad choice. He's gritting his teeth and doesn’t notice until he feels the beginning of a headache in his temples. He has to tell Steve right now. He has to tell Steve this very moment. He has to he has to he has to.

“You okay?” Steve asks.

Sam swallows and takes a deep, deep breath. He nods.

“Do you know what those reporters were talking about? The president signed an executive order?”

Sam sets his computer down and sits beside Steve. He turns his body toward him and looks him in the eye, takes in this last moment of not-angry-raging-Steve. “The president signed an executive order this morning staying all Avenger actions until after Congress makes a decision on the Registration Act.”

Steve expression hovers between incredulity and laughter. “Sam, what are you talking about?”

“Rhodey told me this morning. They’ve put us on ice.”

“We don’t answer to Congress. We don’t answer to anyone.”

“Therein lies the problem,” Sam says.

Steve shakes his head. “No.”

“Steve.”

“No. I’m calling Fury.”

“I’m sure he’s working—”

“No, I’m not talking back channels and whispered phone calls. He needs to get out ahead of this. He needs to come back from the dead and tell—”

“The president and the American people and maybe the UN to fuck off, we do what we want?”

“Sam, you know that’s not what this is about.”

Sam shrugs. “It might be what it’s about. When this whole thing gets turned into sound bites and headlines. It will be in it’s most reductivist state. Tony and the others want law and order. We want anarchy and vigilantism. Tony and Congress don’t want super powered beings running pell-mell through the streets. Steve and Co. do.”

“Tony Stark profited off selling weapons to the government for most of his life and wants to turn the Avengers into another weapon of the government. Steve Rogers doesn’t. Tony Stark wants to talk about accountability and redress only after all his fuck-ups are conveniently over and unlikely to be punished. Steve Rogers wants to keep the world safe, politics be damned. Tony Stark is full of shit and Steve Rogers isn’t!”

Sam pats Steve’s knee. “I’d lose that last one. Lot of emotion. No content.”

“Shut up, Sam,” Steve says tiredly. He squeezes Sam’s hand.

“There’s another thing,” Sam says.

Steve’s shoulder’s sag. “An asteroid is headed for earth?” he guesses.

Sam smiles. “No, this is good news.” He tilts his head. “Sort of.”

Steve frowns. “Your words are one thing, but your face is another.” He runs his thumb along the furrowed line of Sam’s brow.

“Sharon found Bucky.”

Sam watches as his word hit Steve like a wall. His stunned expression would be hilarious in other circumstances.

“She told me last night.” Sam flexes his hands. “That’s what’s in the envelope.”

Steve flicks his eyes at the coffee table, back to Sam, back to the coffee table. And Sam can see it. Steve’s thinking about all the wasted minutes between when Sam knew and when he’s told him. He’s thinking of the sex and the breakfast and the slow unfolding of their morning when Sam could have said something and didn’t.

“Where is he?” Steve asks. His voice is strange, a negotiation between his anger at Sam and his desperation to find Bucky.

“Virginia.”

“How far?”

“A little less than 200 miles.”

Steve stands up with super soldier speed. It’s a quickness he usually remembers to modulate in non-combat moments. It takes Sam by surprise and he pulls back.

Steve grabs the envelope from the coffee table and snatches out the papers inside. Sam hasn’t perused them yet. Steve’s face as he reads is intense, interrogatory, demanding. He lifts his head. “Sharon has eyes on him?”

Sam nods.

“I’m going to get him.”

“Steve—”

“I’m going to get my friend back,” Steve says. His voice is cold and steely with resolution.

“We talked about this,” Sam says. He feels oddly helpless, weak in the face of Steve’s emotions. “We said he should stay gone.”

“We know where he is,” Steve says. He drops the file of papers on the counter and is up the stairs in seconds. Sam hears him burst into his bedroom on the far side of the house. He’s packing. He’s going after Bucky.

Sam gets up and finds that his body is old and creaky and tired. It is reluctant to follow Steve up the stairs, but he makes it. He forces his legs to carry him to Steve’s door.

“Are you coming?” Steve demands.

“Steve.”

“He’s alive, Sam. He’s alive and we know where he is.”

“So much is happening right now.”

“ _This_ is happening right now. Bucky is out there and for the first time since the hellicarriers, I know where he is. And you want me to hang out here and go to hearings and ask senators to pretty please let us keep our jobs.”

“That was important to you a few minute ago.”

“A few minutes ago, _you_ hadn’t told me you knew where Bucky is.” Steve glares at Sam and a wounded silence seeps into the room like poisonous gas.

“I had a long day.”

“Well, I’ve had a long two years.” Steve yanks his phone charger out of the wall and throws it in his bag. He radiates with a barely controlled violence.

“Steve, you’re mad at me. Stop taking it out on your possessions.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Steve grits out through clenched teeth.

“We said we would find Bucky, keep tabs on him. We said if he wanted to come in, he would come in. We said we wouldn’t drag him kicking and screaming.”

“Whatever resources Sharon had to find Bucky, don’t you think Hydra has those resources, too? And don’t you think they want their soldier back?”

“Barnes is an adult, Steve. A capable adult who has kept himself free this long.”

“He’s in the woods. By himself.”

“Maybe he likes the woods,” Sam says. “Maybe he likes being alone.”

Steve’s glower is extraordinary. “Just say you don’t want Bucky in your life, Sam. Just be fucking honest.”

“I crossed this country a dozen times with you looking for him!”

“And then you gave up. And you made me give up. And you got comfortable here with your VA job and your friends and every once in a while you get to play dress up with your wings and have a little bit of extra fun. What do I have, Sam? Except the terrible knowledge that I left my best friend for dead and he ended up in the hands of madmen who unmade him and turned him into a killing machine? What do I have except that moment on the hellicarrier when he knew me? When he looked into my eyes and knew who I was? WHAT DO I HAVE, SAM?”

Steve’s words feel like knives, each blade distinct in its cut and pain. He looks at his shoes. “I thought you had me, Steve. And Nat and Tony and the team. I thought you had us. And _we_ need you. We need you to explain to the American people and the government and yeah, maybe to Tony and Nat themselves, why we shouldn’t become a super soldier army for America, or for the UN.”

Steve shakes his head like he has water in his ears. “That’s Fury’s job.” He picks up his bag and slings it over his shoulder. Sam sees the writing on the wall. Steve’s not going to change his mind and he will barrel through Sam if he tries to stop him. And he’ll never forgive Sam if Sam doesn’t go with him.

Sam follows behind as Steve gathers up loose odds and ends in the house. It’s the kind of walking you do in dreams though, distracted and slow, as though the air has a different resistance and gravity is higher. He glides behind Steve – feeling vague and faraway from the action of his life -- until Steve is in the front hall closet, pulling out his shield.

“Your wings are on campus, right?” Steve says. “If we’re already going, I want to get my stealth suit.”

“I don’t want to fight Barnes again.”

“We’re not going to fight Bucky. I’m worried we might run into other people who’ve also found him.”

“Steve,” Sam says.

Steve ignores him. He goes back to grab the papers Sharon gave them. “He remembered me,” he says almost to himself.

“The hearings for the Registration Act start on Monday,” Sam says.

“I don’t care.”

“Fury needs us to be there. And Hill. And any hero who’s scared. They need us.”

Steve shakes his head. His face and neck are flushed. “Do we need to go to campus to get your wings?”

“Steve, I’m not coming with you.”

Steve flinches, but it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reaction. “Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” Steve zips up his bag and secures his shield to his forearm. “I don’t really need the stealth suit anyway.” He strides to the door purposefully, his shoulders back and his spine ramrod straight.

“The reporters—” Sam remembers just as Steve opens the door.

Journalists converge on Steve until he barks out angrily, “Get out of my damn way.”

They all step away and some of them look afraid. Not many people have seen Steve angry. Certainly not with cameras around. Sam listens to the roar of Steve’s motorcycle and he has an absurd image of Steve returning with Bucky in a sidecar, bound and gagged and looking very annoyed. Sam laughs. Nothing’s funny, but he laughs anyway. He closes his front door and presses his back to it. He slides down to the floor and he laughs.

The first part is supposed to be easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess there is no update schedule. I guess I just write when I feel like it because I have no discipline of any sort. Sorry y'all and hope you like it. Also please leave me comments. I like to know what you guys are feeling. :D


	9. Should

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam talks to Misty and attends the protest against Zemo
> 
> (Content Warning: There is a protest in this chapter where Zemo uses white nationalist rhetoric and characters engage with the police.)

Sam expects Misty’s call without realizing that he’s expecting it. His phone rings and his caller ID says Baby Girl and he thinks, _Oh yeah, Misty,_ as though they have prearranged the call. When he answers, he doesn’t say, “Hello” as he plans, though. He says, “I’m supposed to be on a date,” and chuckles.

He brushes his close-cropped hair forward with his hand -- he went in for an early-edge up with his barber on his lunch break yesterday and he likes how a fresh cut feels on his palm.

His barber had smirked. “I don’t usually see you until Saturday. Hot date?” he asked and Sam had grinned and said, “Yeah. A real hot one,” and his barber had whistled and grinned back. That was a lifetime ago, it seems.

Misty pauses on the other end of the phone. She doesn’t know how to respond to Sam’s unorthodox greeting. It’s an awkward pause and Sam doesn’t think to fill it, but that’s only because he’s overwhelmed by the absurdity of the full situation. That he got a hair cut yesterday for his date tonight with Steve and Steve has gone off to save Bucky and the government has all but disbanded the Avengers and Monday, someone is going to have to convince them that that was a bad idea, and that person should be Steve, but Steve is gone.

“Sammy?” Misty says. She sounds cautious, wary of Sam’s emotional state. He’s a weirdo with a grenade in the subway tunnel she thinks she can talk down.

Sam sighs. He’s lying on his bed staring up at the smooth white ceiling. The light fixture casts an elliptical shadow of pale gray across the blankness that has caught Sam’s gaze as a point of interest. He’s slightly too cold with the thermostat set to 74 degrees but he hasn’t gotten under the covers. It’s silly to climb into bed at seven on a Friday night. He should just get up and change the temperature. He should just go on that date with Steve. He sighs again. “I shouldn’t be talking to you,” he tries to clarify. “I’m supposed to be on a date.”

“Go back to your date then,” Misty says. She’s missing the point and Sam doesn’t blame her. “But call me back. I mean it.”

“We can talk now,” Sam says. “My date is… well, he’s running after another man right now. Which is the least of my problems, actually. But it looms large, emotionally.” The tempo of his words isn’t quite right; he feels like he’s gathering each one from a different and very distant point in his brain.

“Sammy, are you drinking?” Misty asks.

“God, that’s a good idea.” Sam laughs. “I hadn’t even thought to start drinking. I’m just on my bed having a very surreal, very quiet panic attack. Not the medical kind, you understand. It’s not like my heart is racing or I feel like I’m dying. I’m just very detached and cold on the inside. Has that ever happened to you?”

Misty’s quiet on the other end for a few seconds. “Yeah,” she finally answers. “A few times.”

“It’s kinda scary,” Sam admits. “It’s like, at least, when I’m having a lot of emotions, I’m making these half-assed plans or you know, yelling at somebody. I’m _doing_ something. Right now, I can’t imagine doing anything. I can’t even pull my blanket on. I’m cold, Misty.”

“Sammy, you’re being dramatic,” Misty says. She uses her no-nonsense voice on him, like he’s just a kid acting out. Like a no-nonsense voice can snap him out of it.

Sam nods. “Probably.”

“The executive order,” she says.

Sam laughs again. “Not good. That shit is Not. Good.”

“No shit,” Misty says. “I thought you had people in high places.”

“There is only so much we can do, you know. Only so many times we can save the world. I didn’t think we’d get brought down by American politics. I mean, it’s always been an utter and complete fuck-cluster, but I don’t know. I was hoping it would be aliens again. Death by aliens would be pretty cool. I mean, I definitely should not be this surprised. Our government has done truly villainous things. The AIDS crisis. The War on Drugs. The War on Terror. Slavery, if we’re going back a little ways. But our government has really been the villain all along. Like, the honest to goodness villain with the waxed, curly mustache and the evil laugh and I don’t know, like a death ray or something. That’s crazy to me. And it’s crazy to me that it’s crazy to me, you know? Like, I’ve been talking shit about America since I could string two words together, but I’m still shocked. Cutting down the Avengers, the people who’ve done nothing but risk our lives against legions of terror. I mean, it’s like – the Avengers aren’t this fascist organization with nefarious goals. We just save people. But apparently, that’s not allowed anymore. You must sign document x, waive file z, and suck at the teat of bureaucracy and lobbyists to save one fucking life ever again. That’s just… that’s just bull shit. And there isn’t a whole lot to do about it. There aren’t places high enough for my people to fix it. It can’t be fixed. None of it can be fixed.”

Sam lapses into silence, not out of any real social cues that he’s talking like someone who has completely lost it, just because he’s done talking. Just because he’s seeing Steve’s face – that face that’s saying, “I won’t forgive you if you don’t come with me” and then that face that says, “Okay, you’re not coming, and this can’t be fixed.”

Sam listens to Misty breathe and she listens to him breathe and after a while, the cold numbness starts to tingle into something a little less debilitating. Sam sits up, grabs the throw blanket from the bottom of the bed, and drapes it around his shoulders. “Maybe I’m being dramatic,” he says.

“You’re at least a lot more pessimistic than you used to be,” Misty says.

Sam doesn’t say that watching one of the loves of your life plummet to his death will do that to you. He shrugs, a gesture lost on her. “You’ve caught me at a low moment.” He flexes his fingers and pulls the blanket tighter. The silence lengthens and it’s a testament to how bone-deep their friendship was and can be again that Sam knows this is a comfortable silence, that Misty is on the other end not feeling anxious to fill it just as he is not anxious to fill it. He feels better just having her on the phone. He’s about to tell her that, that she’s comforting him right now, when she says:

“So, Steve ran off after another man?”

Sam laughs out loud at her prurient tone. “Yeah. He did. This morning, actually.”

“So, the wound’s still fresh.”

“Still bleeding, even. He’s being noble though. Not like, just making a move on some guy. He’s being noble. Selfish. Absolutely idiotic. But noble.”

“You don’t even get to be properly angry at him if he’s being noble,” Misty points out.

“Exactly. Fucking exactly.”

“That’s the problem with you heroes,” Misty says. “You guys have these reasons that pass muster all too well, so then we on the other end of it feel like assholes if we’re mad and _then_ we’re mad because we feel like assholes when we’re just being human.”

“Are we talking about me and Steve or me and you?” Sam asks. It’s a dangerous question, but there was a time when there were no dangerous questions between them and Sam wants that again.

“Why can’t it be both?” she asks.

Sam picks at the knit of his blanket. “I wish that I had been honest with myself back then. With you. With him.” He can’t say Riley’s name. It is too precious, a Faberge egg in this maelstrom of a conversation. “I don’t know that it would have changed anything. In the end. It would have changed a lot in the interim. But he might still be…dead. And then you get into the whole ‘better to have loved and lost’ debate and that’s not really the point. The point is, I wish I had been more honest.”

“Yeah,” Misty says. That’s it. _Yeah._

“I think Steve might have been in love with Bucky. Before. But I’m too afraid to ask him. Because what if he tells me the truth and I’m right? Or he lies to me and I’m right? Or he doesn’t know, which basically makes me right?”

“What if you’re wrong?” Misty asks.

Sam shakes his head. “It’s not fair of me either way. They have a history together. Whatever it is. But you don’t let someone beat you into a pulpy, bloody mess and drop your body into a river and _then_ chase after to save them if there isn’t something profound happening there. Last week, my biggest problem was Steve being suicidally reckless because he hadn’t found Bucky yet. Now, he’s found him and…”

 “What’s your ideal situation here?”

“Ideal?” Sam repeats. “It’s pretty selfish.”

“It’s me, Sammy,” Misty says, sounding amused that she has to remind him that she knows him too well for anything he says to turn her away.

“Ideal? Steve found out Bucky was doing his thing in the woods of Virginia and let him do that. And was currently on a date with me, not feeling any emotional conflict about that choice.”

“Doesn’t sound like a hero. Would you respect him in the morning if he’d made that call?”

“Yes!” Sam says emphatically. “I mean, probably.” He sighs. “Maybe not. I would have known he was doing it for me.”

“So, he did the thing he was always going to do. The thing that is probably part of the reason you love him. But it’s let you really start to nurse this seed of doubt about his relationship with Bucky.”

“Who tried to kill both of us last time we met.”

“Reasons aplenty not to like the guy.”

“But?” Sam says. It’s so easy to hear the things Misty’s saying and not-saying, alluding to and talking around. It’s like their five years apart never happened.

“But it’s not in you to be this jealous and petty and small-minded. Those were always my issues.”

“Misty—”

“No, I mean it. I was right about you and Riley.” (Sam flinches.) “But I was still jealous and petty about it. Your problems have always been a lack of self-awareness and a freakish non-confrontational-ness that verges on unhealthy.”

“Check and check,” Sam says wryly.

“What I’m saying is, you’re a catch, Sam and I can’t imagine someone being around you and not falling for you. And you should just ask Steve about his feelings for Bucky.”

“He’s gone,” Sam says.

“Go after him. Call him. It’s the 21st century, Sam. Miscommunication does not need to drive the drama of our lives anymore.”

Sam sighs. “Someone has to help Maria. There are going to be hearings on Monday. To decide the fate of the Avengers for good. Of all unauthorized violent non-state actors.”

“That is a wrench,” Misty concedes. “You can still call him.”

“I know, but…”

“But, what?”

“You’re just going to yell at me.”

“No, I won’t.”

“I promise, you will.”

“Sammy.”

“Baby Girl.”

“Sammy,” Misty says more sternly.

Sam exhales. “But he shouldn’t have gone in the first place. And I shouldn’t have to point out to him that he made me feel very unimportant this morning when he hopped on his bike inside of three minutes of learning that Bucky was around.”

“So, you’re still caught in a petty, jealous loop of self-destruction,” Misty diagnoses.

“Yes,” Sam says defiantly.

He can almost see her shake her head and shrug. “Well, I can’t work with that. And…notice that I’m not yelling.”

“That Danny fellow has really done a number on you,” Sam marvels.

The smile in her voice is almost-nauseating. “Yeah, he’s a good guy.”

 “Tell me about him,” Sam invites. He settles into this new conversation easily. Everything doesn’t have to be about him or this damn political assfuck they’re all about to take.

“He’s tall,” Misty says, “thin, Indian – actual Indian, not Native-American Indian. He’s got these big brown doe eyes. His hair is super thick and wavy and he needs a haircut, which I keep telling him and he keeps ignoring. But that’s Danny.…”

 

“I am really fucking tired of getting out of my bed on a beautiful Saturday morning -- a bed where my very hot wife is sleeping, by the way -- and come down here to protest yet _another_ assclown who thinks he’s got something important to say.”

Sam hands Lynn her large iced coffee and she sucks down about an inch before she smiles at Sam and continues, “I’m fucking tired of it, Wilson.”

He nods his agreement and scans the crowd. The police have cordoned off a section for ‘counter protestors’ that is laughably small considering the turn out of Sam’s sort of people. Black women outnumber other demographics by a visible margin, but people from all walks of life are standing out here. They hold protest signs, some with naïve triumph in their eyes, as if just by showing up they’ve dealt a blow to Zemo and his followers. Some have a quiet weary determination in the lines of their face. Sam supposes he looks a lot more like the latter. It was hard to get to his age and not feel a little tired. Or in Lynn’s words, _fucking tired._

Sam tilts his head toward Lynn’s sign which just reads, _Hey Zemo! Fuck You!_

Lynn rolls her eyes. “I made it this morning. Before coffee. I couldn’t think of anything clever.”

“No, I like it,” Sam says. “It’s not like he’s going to read any of these signs and change his mind. Might as well.”

“Erica says hello, by the way,” Lynn says.

“Did she ever settle that whole thing with her mama.”

Lynn rolls her eyes again. “Yeah. The new Emergency™ is that Mrs. Rodriguez can’t find this photo album from a million years ago in that Museum of Useless Clutter she calls a house.”

Sam smiles and lets Lynn rant for a while. They have attended a record 14 protests this year, not all of them, thank God _,_ related to another black person being killed by the police. He and Lynn came out after that pro-life terrorist placed bombs all around the city and threatened to detonate if the laws weren’t changed; after an expose on the drone strikes in the Middle East was published; when a congressman sent lewd photographs to his interns and refused to resign.

Looking back on it, Sam realizes this year has been kind of a shit-show. And now they’re out here again, this time protesting a white nationalist who looks normal enough that CNN and MSNBC don’t mind putting him on their channels to spout his trash opinions.   

If Steve weren’t in Virginia reuniting with his best pal Bucky, he’d be here now too. He comes out to these protests with Lynn and Sam, more often than not.  Sometimes, he’s in his uniform, looking surly and imposing. Sometimes, he’s just a member of the crowd. This Zemo character would bring out Cap’s shield and suit, for sure.

It isn’t like Zemo’s going to listen to Sam or Lynn. Not to any of these other people out here with their black and brown skin, their pride flags worn proudly, their visible disabilities or nonconformity to gender roles.

Sam shifts on his feet and looks around, feels that familiar niggle of despair as he takes in all the marginalized people standing or sitting around him, ready to scream themselves hoarse and forego a morning of rest just to shout down an asshole with a mic. Sam loves this group of strangers he’s standing with right now like they’re family, but damn does he wish they could be together under kinder circumstances. Eating cupcakes instead of fighting to have their existence respected. Or barring cupcakes, Sam wishes that he and Steve could be standing here in their uniforms – not picking a fight necessarily (though Sam wouldn’t say _no_ to picking a fight with a white nationalist) – just exerting a meaningful presence over proceedings. That’s what the suit and wings did for Sam. Exerted meaning.

He sighs. He doesn’t want to dwell on what might happen if the government takes his wings, either literally or symbolically. Even if they let him fly at their beck and call, he’ll have lost them. And Sam can’t stomach that hypothetical right now, not on top of all the real things that are happening.

When Zemo finally arrives, a disheartening number of white people are standing in his audience cheering and whistling. They wave Confederate flags and signs that say, “Fight Back.” To the last man and woman, they are red in the face with euphoric hate. Sam is nauseated. He glances at Lynn and her face mirrors his disgust.

The counter-protesters around Sam start chanting “Hate Will Not Win” and Sam joins their bellows. It’s ultimately a gesture without significance, but he’ll be damned if he goes back into his apartment and lets these kind of people think they’re unopposed.

“Hate will not win!” he shouts, even if it feels like it’s been winning since the beginning of time. Hate, money, and power. Entangled and winning. Crushing down any sort of action. The Avengers. He stops chanting. Just looks down at Lynn. Looks across the crowd at a black woman. Her hair falls down her back in thick box braids; a septum piercing glints from her wide nose. She has round cheeks and a soft, pillowy body underneath her black t-shirt with RESIST in white caps across her chest. Sam wants to go to her, to ask her where she gets her fight. To ask if he can tap into her well because he’s suddenly on empty. Maybe because she reminds him of his mother and sister back in Harlem. Maybe because he has also bought into the narrative that black women are going to save them all. She’s here because her life is in danger when men like Zemo speak. Sam is here because her life is in danger when men like Zemo speak. The thought gives him resolve. He joins the chants again.

Zemo’s sound system is good enough that he all but drowns out Sam and his cohorts when he begins to speak. Their shouts are tiny by comparison. Zemo has a soft voice, nothing like the demagogues Sam has taken to be prototypical. He speaks in a measured, thoughtful manner and Sam recognizes how dangerous this delivery is as soon as the counter-protesters stop shouting in spite of themselves. The news crews are right up at the podium, getting their footage and Zemo’s audience is enraptured.

“We need to take our nation back,” Zemo is saying. His calm is frightening, as though any of his words come from a place of logic and reasonableness. “We need to take it back from the blacks and the browns. From the gays and the Left and the politically correct. We need to take it back from these “Avengers.’” Sam shifts his feet. “Some of you were fooled. Captain America looked the part. Like he was on our side. A proud, _real_ American. But he’s the worst of the lot. And see who they allow into their ranks. An alien. A monster. Not one, but two blacks.” Lynn squeezes Sam’s hand and a ripple of anger goes through the protestors. “A robot. A rich playboy who turned his back on the US military to coddle the feelings of the soft Lefties. And the mindless ‘Americans’ flock to them. Not to our police officers and military. But to these flashy, untrustworthy boys with their gadgets and costumes. But no more. No more. Real Americans aren’t going to stand by while these pretty boys run our country, unelected and unimpeded! We will take our nation back. By force, if we must. As our revolutionary forefathers wrested this great, majestic country from the hands of rich kings, so we shall wrest it from the hands of these fake Americans, these con artists, these faux heroes! America belongs to us! Take back America!

As the noise of the crowd swells into cheers on the one side and boos on the other, Sam turns to Lynn. “At least he’s not making the pro-legislation crowd look good.”

Lynn grimaces. “You’d be surprised how many times having a prominent white nationalist in your corner didn’t actually _hurt_ a political agenda’s approval ratings.”

Sam concedes the point with a frown and Lynn lifts her sign up high and yells “Fuck you, Zemo!” in a voice that carries enough that she gets a laugh out of the people around them.

Someone even louder than her takes up the call, and chants out, “Fuck you, Zemo! Fuck you! Fuck you, Zemo! Fuck you!” until the whole mass of them are shouting it out together, finally succeeding in drowning out Zemo’s calm, measured speech, which is assumedly more of the same.

 _Fuck you, Zemo! Fuck you!_ they scream.

Lynn points her chin at the cops at the perimeter of the protest. They’re starting to grip their batons and some of them have that skittish fear in their eyes that precipitates bad decisions. Sam grimaces. When he’s in his Falcon uniform, the police are a lot more likely to listen to him when he says they don’t need to escalate the situation. Now, he’s just a black guy in a gray V-neck and jeans. Not exactly the sort of person a cop is likely to notice – at least, not in a good, productive way.

Sam glances over at the red-faced white people who have turned away from Zemo to scream back at the protestors. FIGHT BACK and FUCK YOU ZEMO battle for dominance in the air and Sam can tell it’s just a matter of time before it’s not just words being hurled. He grabs Lynn’s shoulder and starts pushing them to the back of the crowd. Lynn is five feet tall and she doesn’t need to get caught in a brawl. She might end up a small smear on the ground. Lynn has the good sense not to take offense when he pulls them all the way to the street cart by the courthouse.

“You know, I can take care of myself,” she says without any heat as they watch the first thrown water bottle arc across the crowd as if in slow motion.  

“Yeah, I know,” Sam says. A cop wades into the protestors side of the rope and starts yanking people out. Doesn’t matter that the water bottle came from Zemo’s side of the line. It never matters who starts these things. Just matters what color you are on which side of the line. The chants have devolved into frightened screams and people shove one another to get closer or further from the action. The paltry rope that has separated the white nationalists from the protestors just isn’t enough. Sam looks at Lynn and she nods.

“I’ll be waiting in the car,” she says firmly. “As long as you need me to.”

Sam kisses the top of her head and launches back into the fracas. He’s gotten pretty good at finding the people in the crowd who don’t want to be a part of the violence and escorting them out. He doesn’t feel guilty leaving the ones in FIGHT BACK shirts to fend for themselves. He takes a couple errant hits to the arm and one punch that glides across his cheekbone, but he dodges the worst of it. He won’t throw a punch of his own. All this needs is a headline that Falcon is fighting white supremacists in his street clothes.

The police are predictably doing more damage than anyone with their batons and Sam finds himself on the end of one just as he’s walking a short, Latina girl with an undercut and a nasty bruise forming under her eye out to safety.

Sam puts his hands up in surrender and turns to face the cop, his spine sore from the blow. “I’m just helping my friend get out of here,” he says calmly, slowly.

“Should’ve stayed at home,” the cop spits out. He’s young with ruddy cheeks, pale blue eyes, and mousy brown hair.

Sam knows he should duck his head and say, “Yes sir,” but he doesn’t have that kind of patience right now. “Everybody has a right to protest,” he says instead. “First amendment.”

“What about his right to free speech?” the cop says like he’s making some good point as he jabs his finger in the direction of the empty pulpit. Zemo has done what he came to do.  

Sam shrugs. “You just hit me in the back with a baton because I’m protesting him. Seems like you’re protecting his right to speech just fine.”

A shadow of rage falls over the cop’s face and Sam can tell this won’t end well. Maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut. He has time to look back and make sure the Latina girl he was helping is clear of danger – she’s standing on the sidewalk, biting her thumbnail, clearly looking for someone who hasn’t made it out of the brawl.

While Sam’s head is still turned, the cop brings his baton down on his shoulder at just the right angle to dislocate it. The world goes white with a pain so immediate and intense, Sam foolishly thinks it’s the worst pain he can stomach without passing out. Until the cop wrenches his arms – injured shoulder and all – behind him and cuffs him.

“You are under arrest for disturbing the peace!” the cop shouts into his ear and around Sam is chaos.

 

Lynn and Rhodey are both there to bail Sam out. He has been sharing a cell with four more protestors for about three hours. An olive-skinned man with long, silky black hair has a crust of blood around his nose and a white guy, so pale and thin you could almost convince yourself he wasn’t there, has a swollen eye and jaw. Sam has done some very basic examinations of both men and satisfied himself that he doesn’t have to demand a doctor for them. He doesn’t need anymore blows to his ribs or his shoulder. He pushed his arm back into the socket when they uncuffed him in the cell and the pain of it had almost made him throw up. For the last couple hours, he’s been careful not to move it at all. No one has said much. The one time someone did – the olive-skinned man had asked for a wash cloth – a lady cop had come over and banged the bars with her baton with gleeful violence.

Lynn and Rhodey appear in Sam’s tired, bored vision. Lynn’s usually sardonic smile has been replaced by actual worry and somewhere inside Sam’s swirl of emotions, he’s touched. Rhodey looks both annoyed and relieved.

“Do you even care that you’re violating an executive order from the President of the United States?” Rhodey asks.

Sam rolls his eyes. “First of all, no. I don’t. Second, I didn’t. I’m not the Falcon right now. I’m just Sam.”

“Well, Just Sam shouldn’t pick fights with the police or Just Sam is going to wind up in jail or dead.” Rhodey scowls down at Sam.

“You sound like my mama.”

“What happened to your arm?” Lynn asks.

Sam shakes his head. “Police brutality. It’s fine. I just need a sling for it.”

The lady cop from before comes and unlocks the cell. Sam gets wearily to his feet.

“Resist,” he says to his cellmates and the bloody-nosed one lifts his fist and the two white guys smile.

“How bad did it get?” Sam asks when they’re out in the waning afternoon light in front of the precinct.

“Bad,” Lynn says. “Couple cop cars on fire. Zemo’s people burned a Captain America, Stark, and War Machine effigy. Like, they came prepared to do it.”

“The cops busted out riot gear and tear gas after about half an hour. More protestors are at the hospital than the jailhouse.” Rhodey shakes his head.

“Well, that’s what happens when your little president signs ass-backward executive orders.” Anger has flooded Sam’s system like a fast-acting drug and he’s almost woozy with it.

“Bullshit,” Rhodey says. “All these protests end like this.”

“Not when I’m wearing the wings, they don’t. Not when you’re in your suit or Steve’s being Cap.”

Rhodey rolls his eyes. “America was scooting along before any of us decided to be heroes.”

“So, we just go back to how it was before, then? We don’t try to make it better?”

“I didn’t come here to fight with you,” Rhodey says.

“Then why are you here? Lynn could have bailed me out without you.”

Lynn looks up at the sky as though a cryptic message has appeared there that she must decipher. She is pointedly not getting involved.

“I came because my friend was in jail.”

Sam snorts.

“What? We’re not friends because we disagree about this?” Rhodey stops walking and turns to face Sam. Lynn drifts a little bit farther down the sidewalk as though to give some semblance of privacy.

“Rhodey, the executive order is dangerous and it’s crazy to me that you can’t see that.”

“People think _we’re_ dangerous and it’s crazy to _me_ that you can’t see why that’s a problem.”

“Face it, Rhodey. At the end of the day, you’re a soldier who wants to follow orders.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing! You’re a soldier, too, Sam.”

Sam shakes his head. “No, Rhodes. We don’t get to be soldiers anymore. We got the call to be heroes.”

Rhodey laughs humorlessly and pulls at the knot of his tie. “You’re as arrogant as Rogers, Sam. Which would be impressive if it weren’t so goddamn disappointing.” He exhales and stares at the sidewalk for a beat or two. “Don’t get arrested again. Next time, I’m not going to come get you out.”

Sam’s head is so full of words and anger, it all getting bottlenecked, so he can’t get any of it out. He watches Rhodey walk away and Lynn drifts back over to him. She tucks herself under his good arm and leans into his side.

“Peace, baby,” she says.

Sam looks down at her and realizes he’s shaking. It’s all coming apart and so is he.

“Let’s get a sling for your arm,” Lynn says gently. “And some food. Erica is making empanadas.” She guides him toward her white Prius and talks in slow, comforting voice. “It’s been a long, bad day, but we’re fine.”

She helps Sam buckle in and when she gets into the driver’s seat, she turns on some soft coffeehouse jams. Stuff that sounds like John Mayer and Michael Buble. Not Sam’s taste, but it quiets him. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slow.

“That’s right,” Lynn says. “Breathe.”

They stop at CVS to grab Sam an arm sling and Lynn helps him get it on. He grits his teeth through the pain of moving his shoulder, but feels only slightly nauseated during the process, so it’s probably nothing worse that the popped socket.

Erica is happy to have Sam over to their apartment and her empanadas are phenomenal. Over dinner, Lynn catches Erica up on their day.

Erica whistles. “Who knew a guy with a kickass name like War Machine would have such a stick up his ass?”

Lynn laughs and although some small part of Sam wants to defend Rhodey, he laughs, too. Meanly.

Sam can see the terrible path they’re on now. Not just him and Rhodey, but everyone caught up in this drama. It doesn’t bode well that laughing at Rhodey makes Sam feel better. It’s a small betrayal. But that’s how betrayal works. That’s how the undoing of friendships and alliances goes. Small betrayals that snowball into larger ones. Until suddenly, you’re not friends at all. You’re either right or wrong, friend or foe. It’s like Sam has a crystal ball here in Lynn’s dining room. And within the swirling depths of the crystal lies disaster and ruin. And Sam doesn’t have Misty here to tell him he’s just being dramatic.

But she had suggested he should get a drink…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zemo was actually a Nazi in the comics so I adapted him as a neo-Nazi, obviously very different from how they used him in CA: Civil War, but that version of Zemo was kind of a weak villain IMO, so I went back to the source material with him.


End file.
